Development of Soil Moisture Content Monitoring System for Precision Measurement of Soil Moisture in Sub-Optimal Land for Palm Oil Plantation

Abstract

Indonesia has 15 million hectares of palm oil plantation, making it one of the world's greatest palm oil and CPO producers. However, despite the large area of palm oil plantations, the production is not yet optimal. Soil moisture and environmental factors are the leading cause. Thus, a technology suited to monitor soil moisture, soil temperature, and microclimates needs to be developed. This research aims to develop a Soil Moisture Content (SMC) Monitoring System that can be used to monitor soil moisture, supported by soil temperature and microclimates variable and also operates automatically and in real-time. The device is also integrated with a cloud server. The implemented SMC was installed on the palm oil plantation of PT Kerry Sawit Indonesia, Wilmar International Plantation. On top of that, the SMC device can measure soil moisture up to three variations of depth. The acquired data was saved and sent to a cloud server. Then, a user can access the data to execute early water deficit anticipation. The resulting device is capable of measuring soil moisture accurately, which can be proven with these parameters, R square value of 0.9782, RMSE of 1.2%, and MAPE of 2.6%.