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OPTIFERT – Development of an automatic irrigation and fertilization system
Project
Project code: 286772
Contract period: 01.12.2011
- 30.11.2013
Budget: 1,428,400 Euro
Purpose of research: Applied research
Due to climate related changes, longer dry periods for European farmers and without irrigation the risk of a volatile harvests will rise, that is the reason for a tendency across
Europe to irrigate fields. The need for innovative irrigated systems is to minimize water consumption and costs. Also in times of limited water the project will be lucrative.
There are more and more increasing cost pressures like costs of water, energy and fertilizer, environmental legislation and requirements, cuts of subsidies, high personal costs etc. The project will help to save a huge amount of money by reducing the mentioned investments.
The tendency to automatic systems in the agriculture is rising and in future farmers will do most of their regulating by a computer. The system will support the farmers to realize their work by modern technology.
Furthermore the project minimizes the pollution of groundwater by reducing fertilizer to a limit and concerns of eutrophication will be decreased.
The aim of the project is to develop a fully automatic irrigation and fertilisation system (with needs based fertilizer spreading) in order to help farmers to monitor and control their water and fertilizer consumption. That basically means we want to combine the irrigation and fertilization in one step. Furthermore, the system will diagnose the need of
the plants with the help of sensors and the interpretation of terrestrial meteorological data. The system consists of a combined sensor-detector-dosage system, which
includes a monitoring, control and distribution unit which enables the dosing and distribution of the water and the fertilizer.
Section overview
Subjects
- Plant Nutrition
- Agricultural Engineering Plant Production
