Towards Affordable Precision Irrigation: An Experimental Comparison of Weather-Based and Soil Water Potential-Based Irrigation Using Low-Cost IoT-Tensiometers on Drip Irrigated Lettuce

Ahmed A. Abdelmoneim, Roula Khadra (), Angela Elkamouh, Bilal Derardja and Giovanna Dragonetti
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Ahmed A. Abdelmoneim: Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari, 70010 Bari, Italy
Roula Khadra: Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari, 70010 Bari, Italy
Angela Elkamouh: Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari, 70010 Bari, Italy
Bilal Derardja: Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari, 70010 Bari, Italy
Giovanna Dragonetti: Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Bari, 70010 Bari, Italy

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Predictive weather-based models are widely used to schedule irrigation through the estimation of crop evapotranspiration. However, perceiving real-time crop water requirements remains a challenge. This research aims at field validating and exploiting a low-cost IoT soil moisture tensiometer prototype to consequently compare weather-based irrigation to soil water moisture-based irrigation in terms of yield and crop water productivity. The prototype is based on the ESP32 microcontroller and BMP180 barometric sensor. When compared to a mechanical tensiometer, the IoT prototype proved its accuracy, registering an average R 2 equal to 0.8 and an RMSE range of 4.25–7.1 kPa. In a second step, the irrigation of a Romaine lettuce field ( Lactuca sativa L.) cultivated under a drip system was managed according to two different scenarios: (1) using the data feed from the IoT tensiometers, irrigation was performed to keep the soil water potential between −15 and −25 kPa; (2) using the data provided by the in-situ weather station to estimate the crop water requirements. When comparing the yield, no significant difference was registered between the two scenarios. However, the water productivity was significantly higher, registering a 36.44% increment in scenario 1. The experiment highlights the water-saving potential achievable through real-time monitoring of soil moisture conditions. Since it is a low-cost device (82.20 USD), the introduced prototype facilitates deploying and managing a fleet of sensors for soil water potential live mapping.

Keywords: precision irrigation; agriculture water management; water productivity; IoT Irrigation; ESP32; sensors (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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