Design and Development of Handheld Soil Assessment by Using Ion-Selective Electrode for Site-Specific Available Potassium in Oil Palm Plantation

Abstract

AbstractIn agriculture, maintaining or monitoring soil nutrients is one of the most important factors that must be done to make sure crops grow healthy and get enough nutrients from the soil. The conventional method to measure the soil nutrient is by laboratory test which takes time to get the result. To overcome this problem, a measurement system that can give a result in a short time should be produced. In this paper, the design and development of a hand-held soil assessment device to measure the real-time and on-the-go soil potassium by using the ion-selective electrode sensor is described. The objective of this paper is to validate the accuracy of the ISE sensor compared to the soil electrical conductivity in measuring soil nutrients. This study has been done at the UiTM palm oil plantation in Jasin, Melaka. A total of 42 locations were studied. The experimental works are conducted to validate the accuracy of the sensor. By choosing a suitable sensor that can give an accurate reading in a short time must be equipped in the system. An ion-selective electrode (ISE) sensor can be used to measure the soil nutrient. Consequently, the precision agriculture system is needed to develop this measurement system which can help the farmer to monitor their farm easily.KeywordsIon-selective electrodePotassiumSoil nutrientPrecision agricultureSmart system