A prototype of an automatic irrigation system for peruvian crop fields

Abstract

Water is an important factor to sustain life and for such a reason it is necessary to take care of it since this is a limited resource. In Peruvian agriculture; however, there is a high percentage of water wasted, as this activity consumes 92% of fresh water; thus, making Peru the 37th country worldwide in misusing water. Due to the aforementioned and considering that the agricultural sector is an important factor for the Peruvian economy, the current study aims to implement a system for automatic irrigation of crop fields in Peru, with the goal of optimizing the use of water and not to waste it as it usually happens. After the implementation of the first prototype of the irrigation system using an Arduino microcontroller and low-cost electronic components, it could be observed that during the tests, 75 and 76.5% of the water that is normally used for irrigation was saved for a dry rainless and dry rainy patch of crop field, respectively. The monitoring of the humidity of the soil was possible due to bluetooth communication. The presented results show the viability of the system and in a follow-up study, largescale tests are expected.