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Agriculture
The soil surface dries quickly, which gives a misleading impression of what lies underneath. The water available to the crop sits forty to sixty centimetres down, out of visual reach. We bury probes at several depths and install a weather station, letting the irrigation decision rest on the actual state of the soil.
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A real example
See this working in practice
A case built from the situations we see most often in this area, with the program working the way it would on your own site.
Situation
Irrigating on a fixed schedule costs water and energy
On most estates, irrigation follows a calendar set by accumulated experience. It rained yesterday, the water goes on anyway. The soil is still saturated, the water goes on anyway. Water and pumping electricity are the two largest variable costs, and neither is measured.
The alternative usually runs into network coverage. The mobile network does not reach the whole estate, and where it does, it means a SIM card per sensor. With a wireless sensor network, a single gateway on a high point covers the whole estate, and the probes stay operational for entire seasons on a lithium battery.
What we measure
- Soil moisture and temperature at 20, 40 and 60 centimetres
- Soil electrical conductivity, to follow fertigation
- Air temperature, relative humidity, wind and radiation
- Rainfall, through a tipping-bucket gauge
- Flow and pressure on the irrigation network
- Level in ponds and reservoirs
- And other quantities, depending on what your operation needs to track.
What you get
A concrete result for the team
The real curve of the soil
After one season you have the real moisture profile of the plots, rather than a table-based estimate.
Water balance by sector
We combine measured moisture with evapotranspiration calculated from the weather station, removing the dependence on a fixed calendar.
Metering of the water applied
Volume per sector and per hectare is recorded, serving both management and certification.
Alerts relevant in the field
Irrigation threshold reached, a pressure drop indicating a burst, or a reservoir below the safety level.
One plot is enough to decide
We install the probes and the station on a reference plot. At the end of the season you compare the volumes applied with neighbouring plots irrigated conventionally, and decide on that basis.