Nutrient Detection for Maize Plant Using Noninvasive Technique

Abstract

India is predominantly an agriculture based country, where almost 60 percent of the people are directly or indirectly employed in agriculture. Agriculture sector in our country contributes to around 18 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is very essential to increase the production in agriculture sector with minimum requirement of resources such as water and minerals. This indeed calls for the requirement of automation in agricultural field. Fertigation process is combination of Fertilization and Drip irrigation where nutrients are injected into irrigation system. This paper deals with the introduction of smart fertigation system which involves nondestructive method to sense the nutrient content of leaf, and provide sufficient fertilizers preventing unnecessary wastage. Optical sensors are used to sense nutrient content in leaf. The nutrients being measured here are Nitrogen (N) and Phosphorous (K). A mathematical model for nutrient detection is developed and compared with the available meters. The results indicate the level of estimated nutrient contents as Low (L), Medium (M) and High (H) based on the sensor data obtained for sample test leaf. The system is tested at different test conditions under the supervision of University of Agricultural Science.