Watering your crops by phone
5 Aug 2013 by Evoluted New Media
A new app has been developed which means smart phones could soon monitor irrigation water use according to need, to ensure food is produced in a sustainable way.
“About 70% of the water withdrawn from river and ground water by humans is for agriculture,” said Andrew Thompson, a plant scientist at Cranfield University who is working to save water using maths.
WaterBee is an EU funded project that is putting the application to the test with a variety of crops in countries such as Estonia, Italy, Spain and the UK. Its app gathers data remotely via sensors in the farmer’s field. Its status is then calculated by an algorithm which relays back to the app how much water should be released by sprinkler systems.
Thompson and his team’s goal is to add just the right amount of water using mathematical models.
“Too much water and it is going to drain out from the soil; too little and your crop yields go down and you have problems with crop quality,” said Thompson.
The algorithm divides the soil into layers and uses calculations for the transfer of water between them. It takes into account details of the soil, irrigation system, crop, roots and likely yields.
The app then makes irrigation recommendations based upon soil-moisture and weather data delivered via wireless technology to a computer server. It checks how well the simulated field matches reality and makes adjustments to bring the virtual farm closer to reality.
“The main thing you need is mobile network coverage and it can work anywhere in the world really,” said Thompson.
The application has been greeted with mixed views. Soil scientist John Norman from the University of Wisconsin, Madison believes inaccurate soil information is a great impediment to implementing these models.
“Irrigation scheduling is very important, but if such scheduling requires much from the farm manager, it is not likely to be sustained. Sensors in the ground are not viewed positively by farmers because they represent obstructions in the field, have questionable accuracy and require maintenance,” he said.
