[April Free Report] Smart Irrigation System for Sustianable Agricultureby Shreya Kaushik | 22-04-2023 23:42 |
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.png)  It was summer, I was visiting my hometown as usual but this time the trip was different. I was visiting my ancestral fields for learning the science behind crop production. While visiting the fields, I learnt about various cultivation and irrigation methods and saw them happening practically with machinery. But, when I saw the irrigation of the fields, I observed that how water is getting wasted due to some gaps in irrigation. It made me curious about solving the issue of water wastage during irrigation, so I along with one of my classmates started a journey of research and innovation using STEM education. India is a diverse country with a population density of roughly 142 million people, of whom approximately 54.6% work in agriculture. Agriculture produces the second-most food in the world, and it accounts for between 17 and 18% of India's GDP. While each year, some 125 million litres of water—equivalent to 30 trillion gallons—are wasted. An estimated 40% of the water used for agriculture—or 70%—is lost through ineffective irrigation. These were a few of the crucial figures that helped us gauge the scope of the issue. Moving forward, we learned that some of the main factors contributing to irrigation water waste were ineffective irrigation systems, overwatering, leaks and evaporation, improper scheduling, and a lack of monitoring.  Credits: Google After understanding the magnitude of the problem, we began investigating and considering what technologies we might utilise to address the issue. And, that¡¯s when the idea of AquaVita was born. AquaVita is an automatic device that that uses sensors to assess the needs of the plants and then automatically supplies water to the crops or plants. AquaVita is a compact smart irrigation system that uses solar energy as its power source, a soil moisture sensor, the Internet of Things, a humidity sensor, a water pump, and other components. The soil moisture sensor recognizes when the soil moisture drops below a set level and uses IoT to send a signal to the water pump. The water is then immediately given to the facility in accordance with its needs. IoT monitors the soil's temperature, moisture content, and humidity, serving as a monitoring system within the system. In contrast, the project's humidity sensor keeps track of ambient moisture. Our device offers a number of benefits, including the ability to provide water according to the type of plant and its needs, saving farmers time, being time-efficient, being economical due to the readily available components, being sustainable, and being replicable.   Project made by Shreya Kaushik and Nutan Pal |
