Smart Irrigation Technique in the Fixed Irrigation System Based on Soil Moisture Content

Abstract The growing water demand has raised serious concerns about the future of irrigated agriculture in many parts all over the world, changing environmental conditions and shortage of water (especially in Iraq) have led to the need for a new system that efficiently manages the irrigation of crops. With the increasing population growing at a rapid pace, traditional agriculture will have a tough time meeting future food demands. Water availability and conservation are major concerns for farmers. The configuration of the smart irrigation system was designed based on data specific to the parameters concerning the characteristics of the plant and the properties of soil which are measured once in the research (permeability, pH, humidity, porosity, etc.), the soil moisture content sensors are placed in the root zone of plants when the crop needs to be irrigated the sensors send notifications to the user of the system from the application on a smartphone to operate the water pump and on the contrary when the soil saturated the sensors notify the user to turn off the water pump. This paper aims to discuss the aspects related to designing and fabricating an automatic irrigation system using sensors of soil moisture content using this method will save time and money significantly. The study found that the quantity of water consumed to irrigate the yellow corn crop in the portion assigned for smart irrigation technique in an area of 875 m 2 is less than the amount of consumed water utilized in the section allocated for fixed sprinkler irrigation in the same area by 34.444%, furthermore, the yield of the yellow corn crop grown using smart irrigation technique exceeds that of the crop grown by fixed sprinkler irrigation. And also, human intervention will be reduced.