Design and testing of autonomous irrigation controllers in commercial green houses to control the water consumption

Abstract

Water management is one of the major challenges while developing sustainable commercial greenhouses. Water is one of the most important resources for crop growth phase along with the nutrition on time. Since current global climatic conditions are not stable, the importance of commercial greenhouses is necessary to meet the pure fruit and vegetable requirements. Underdeveloped irrigation plans are normally leading to water stress, which may result in the decrease in yield and high operations cost to cope up the demand. Maintaining adequate soil water levels is mandatory for all the proper water growth. Automatic irrigation control system can drive an important role in water conservation and at the same time to serve the crop requirement on right time. Atomized irrigation control systems with a well-defined field devise equipped with sensors can maximize the effectiveness of the irrigation water management technology. An experimental setup of the automatic control system has been developed with the help of direct digital control(DDC) technology, and the same has been tested in cucumber greenhouse. This prototype has been developed with the help of a synchronization controller and a communication device to interact with the main climatic control system. A unique converter was developed and tested in cucumber greenhouses. Two algorithms for water control, i.e., a variable frequency drive based (VFD module) on-demand method and a required water calculation method, were programmed. The irrigation controller showed the ability to measure soil demands in real-time and to elicit irrigation at a customary value properly. The system performance for upholding soil rigidities based on this automatic controller was strongly affected by sunlight, whereas the water calculation method is providing a meek irrigation process deprived of recurrent irrigation.