MITAOE, Alandi (D) Pune : TY BTECH

Case 2: Use of Digital Technology in Agriculture for improving Drip Irrigation System

Courtesy: Dr Manish Giri, School of Computer Sciences, MIT AOE Alandi (D)

The Indian economy is mainly based on agriculture. However, the irrigation of cultivable land depends on climatic
conditions. India is a place where farmers are not able to make full use of agricultural water resources because of lack
of rainfall and scarify of land reservoir water. The continuous extraction of water from earth is lowering the level of
the underground water table making access to underground water very difficult. This is resulting into lot of land
coming under non tillage zone. Another reason, for non utilization of water resources is lack of proper plan for water
usage due to which a significant amount of water is wasted.

Figure 1: Conventional Drip Irrigation System

In the modern drip irrigation systems, the most significant advantage is that water is supplied near the root zone of
the plants drip by drip due to which a large quantity of water is properly utilized and conserved. Currently the Indian
farmers have been using manual irrigation in which a farmers irrigates the land at the regular intervals. This process
consumes more water and sometimes it reaches at belated stage, leading to crops to dehydration. Water deficiency
is detrimental to plants before visible wilting occurs. Slowed growth rate, lighter weight of fruits are caused by water
deficiency. This problem can be effectively rectified if farmers use automatic irrigation system by using Wireless
Application. In the present Thesis, the analysis of multi method automated drip irrigation system has been
implemented and tested for optimum utilization of available water resources, using Wireless Sensor Network. This
thesis, focuses on comparative study of different algorithms used viz. Linear Interpolation, Exponential Interpolation
and Piecewise Interpolation for optimizing water utilization. The experiment is conducted on real time environmental
parameters, such as soil moisture, temperature and Humidity in agriculture sector and analysed for its effects on the
cultivated plants or crops.

The implemented system is deployed at Vigyan Ashram for data and result analysis. After conducting experiment, it is
found that, the overall efficiency of water optimization ranges from 24-49% than other related work conducted in Drip
Irrigation.
Figure 2 Extensive Deployment of Wireless Sensor Nodes in conventional automated Drip Irrigation for Tillage (at
every root zone)

The system was carefully studied by a Computer Scientist, to realise that a lot of water could be saved by using it
more effectively, avoiding the wastage. The extensive research helped in a revised Deployment of Wireless Sensors,
which is shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Selective Deployment of Wireless Sensor Nodes in proposed automated Drip Irrigation system for Tillage