Performance assessment of indigenized soil moisture sensors for improved irrigation scheduling and maize production

Agriculture being the major user of water resources, accounts for 70% of global freshwater demand. With the rise in demand of clean water, the need to implement more efficient strategies for water management in irrigated agriculture increases. A field study was carried out to produce maize crop at the Water Management Research Center, Postgraduate Agricultural Research Station, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. Total forty-two (42) indigenized soil moisture sensors (15.24 cm & 30.48 cm long) of copper, brass, and steel were installed for monitoring irrigation efficiency of seven maize production treatments. The indigenized sensors and irrigation system were integrated with Arduino Microcontroller and Raspberry Pi3 for irrigating maize crop. Arduino Mega was coupled with Arduino Ethernet Shield for transformation of soil moisture data on cloud. Drip irrigation treatments (T-6 = 390.8 mm and T-7 = 387.2 mm) required significantly lower mean amount of water than all the other treatments and the flood irrigation treatments (T-1 = 659.6 mm and T-2 = 644.5 mm) required the greatest (alpha = 0.05) amount of mean irrigation depth. Drip irrigation treatments (T-6 and T-7) produced higher mean water productivity values (19.55 and 19.2) than those under flood irrigation treatments (T-1 = 9.2 and T-2 = 9.72) and perforated pipe irrigation treatments (T-3 = 17.3, T-4 = 17.11 and T-5 = 16.38). The mean yield of maize grain over two years was greater under drip irrigation treatments (T-6 = 7634.0 kg/ha and T-7 = 7430.5 kg/ha) than those under flood (T-1 = 6072.8 kg/ha, T-2 = 6263.1 kg/ha) and perforated pipe irrigation treatments (T-3 = 7209.3 kg/ha, T-4 = 7097.6 kg/ha, T-5 = 6793.1 kg/ha). Perforated pipe irrigation treatments had significantly greater (alpha = 0.5) maize grain yield than those under flood irrigation treatments. The indigenized sensors proved to be a viable tool to monitor real time soil moisture at 15.24 cm, 30.48 cm, 60.96 cm and 91.44 cm depth in the root zone for promoting precision irrigation to improve water productivity.