Design, construction and evaluation of an online control system for drop irrigation in greenhouse

At the moment, the importance of managing the proper use of water resources due to climate change, rainfall reduction, population growth and water consumption is considered. In this regard, the design, construction, and evaluation of an easy-to-use tool for cucumber irrigation on a smartphone was designed to enhance irrigation efficiency. In this research, the design and construction of an online drop irrigation control system was performed based on obtaining information about the greenhouse cucumber product such as moisture content, ambient temperature and soil by sensors. The most important components of this system include microcontroller, wireless sensor stations, control and information processing station, wireless sensor, humidity meter, temperature sensor and ambient humidity sensor, solenoid valve and water meter. The programming language used for the microcontroller was BASIC, and for the design of electronic circuits, the PROTEUS software was used. Statistical analyzes were performed using SPSS software. There was a significant difference between product yield and mean water consumption at 5% and 1% for both online and manual control methods, respectively. In online irrigation control system, the lifetime of greenhouse cucumber plant was 18 days longer than manual irrigation system. The results of cucumber production in online drop irrigation system were 101.23 t/ha more than manual drop irrigation system. In this system, the management of time and space and the cost of irrigation (removal of workers for irrigation) is not comparable to manual method. Therefore, the use of an online control system can be a reliable alternative to manual irrigation and the efficiency of this system is more favorable.