IoT-Enabled Smart Irrigation System for Efficient Water and Nutrient Management

Objective of the study to find out irrigation management in conserving the water resources with irrigation system to increase crop productivity. In this paper, this has designed and implemented an IoT-based smart irrigation system using soil moisture, pH, and NPK sensors for remote monitoring and control of soil parameters, by interfacing them with the NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller. The output values obtained from the sensors were displayed using an LCD and values were then sent to a cloud server for remote access. Research also interfaced a relay module with a water pump to water the plants automatically when moisture content is lower than a set threshold. The results indicate that the soil moisture sensor's values, NPK sensors and pH sensor are well correlated with the lab values with an error of less than 3%, 5% and 2% respectively. The comparison of the results with the manual practice of irrigation demonstrated a considerable difference in the water and fertilizer consumption with the implementation of IoT assistance in the irrigation system. Therefore, this study confirms that the proposed model is precise, accurate, cost-efficient, and easily scalable for practical applications in smart agriculture by eliminating wastage and real-time monitoring of required inputs.