Abstract
Modern agriculture uses techniques and technologies that have provided farmers with increased yield and a possible reduction in costs. Optimizing the use of inputs by applying exact and accurate doses, which match the real needs of the soil, in addition to supplying the necessary nutrients for the correct development of the crops, enables a reduction in costs and environmental impacts caused by the incorrect use of products such as fertilizers and pesticides. With this background, this paper presents a study on the development of a capacitive sensor to identify the absence, presence or variations in the distribution of solid mineral fertilizers. To evaluate this sensor, eight different formulations were tested in distribution analysis with an overflow dosing mechanism, both statically and dynamically, with 2% maximum moisture variation between all samples. The identification of an absence or presence of fertilizers was successful in 100% of the experiments. Tests to identify variations in the fertilizer distribution were carried out through simulated obstruction. The sensor identified a reduction in the fertilizer flow in all experiments, obtaining numeric variations above 55%. In the fertilizer formulation identification test, only the formulations 02-28-20 and 06-21-12 in experiments carried out with the overflow dosing mechanism did not differ statistically one from another, while all other formulations presented a statistically significant difference in the ANOVA analysis and the Tukey test at 5% significance.
Highlights
The use of scientific and technological knowledge to improve yield and for the possible reduction of costs is an important characteristic of modern agriculture, which might generate better economic results for farmers
Capacitance refers to the ability to store electrical energy between the electrodes that make up a capacitor or capacitive sensor when they are submitted to potential difference
The values referring to the difference between fertilizer presence orfertilizer absencepresence presentedorinabsence the graphs are thein results of the are mean the 240ofsamples collected in static and presented the graphs theofresults the mean of the 240 samples dynamic modes
Summary
The use of scientific and technological knowledge to improve yield and for the possible reduction of costs is an important characteristic of modern agriculture, which might generate better economic results for farmers. An increase of the yield efficiency of a system mainly depends on the technology used with it, and its profitable use depends on the amount of information available to better use its resources. Within this perspective, precision agriculture (PA) appears to be an ally to the farmers, introducing techniques and technologies to help with the management and improvement of the agricultural production system. The soil fertilization process is vital to the crop development, allowing the reposition of nutrients extracted by the plants or the addition of nutrients missing in that soil, providing
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