A Distributed and Wireless Data Acquisition System to Fight Against Sugarcane Orange Rust

Abstract

Brazil is the world’s largest producer of ethanol and the main disease that attacks sugarcane plantations, ethanol’s raw material, is the orange rust. This blight is caused by the pathogen Puccinia kuehnii and practically decimated the entire sugarcane production in countries like Australia. This paper presents a distributed data acquisition system, funded by Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Food Supply, for use in decision support systems to control the P. kuehnii. The data acquired by this system could assist the farmers in making an intelligent chemical control. This system is based mainly on mini-stations to be installed in the subregions of cultivation. The data acquired by each mini-station are transferred daily via wireless transmission to a central computer. In this computer, the data may be applied to mathematical models, which would provide an alert about when the farmer should make the chemical control and, moreover, would tell him/her in what subregions such control should occur.