Data Driven Irrigation Scheduling for Water Saving

Farmers are using seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides in measured quantity but not the water, which is an important and scarce resource. The main reason for this is the lack of farmer friendly irrigation scheduling tool. In this study, efforts were made to develop a simple irrigation scheduling method and tool to optimize water use for sustainability. A study carried out on a farmer’s field for irrigation of wheat crop for two years showed that there was 20.1 percent saving of water and 27.5 percent increase in water use efficiency, in terms of yield per unit of water, if measured quantity of water is supplied based on evaporative demand of crop as against traditional method of adhoc supply. In this study, crop irrigation requirement based on Cumulative Pan Evaporation is used to apply irrigation water. In addition to this, IoT-based soil moisture sensor is installed in the root zone of the crop to monitor and give alert for scheduling irrigation at Allowable Depletion of soil moisture to avoid water stress. Based on the study, Data driven irrigation scheduling APP is developed which is easy to use by the farmers. The App uses 20 years historical daily pan evaporation data. The Algorithm consists of processing of the inputs by the farmer such as crop type, area, water flow rate, and the dates of last & current irrigation. The output consists of total time of irrigation in hours and minutes. The App is useful for winter crops in the area having similar climate.