Abstract:
Pakistan is water scarce country, with limited water resources. About 96% of
the total available water is used for agricultural purposes, leaving 2% for domestic
and another 2% for industrial use. The agriculture sector contributes about 25% of the
Pakistan's GNP. Farmers in Pakistan receive their share of irrigation waters on a
rotational basis. To protect their water, the farmers are using more than the optimum
quantity of water required for healthy crops. Keeping in view the scarcity of water a
project was designed with the objectives to (i) develop a soil moisture sensor and (ii)
wireless Sensors Network (WSN) in determining the adequacy of water level for ideal
irrigation system for crops in Pakistan. Perfection and precision brings heavy costs to
the developers of such technologically advanced systems. The greater the
sophistication of the system, the greater is the associated cost. An effort has been
made to bring down the cost of this sophistication to the end user enabling not only
larger economic output but also embedding different techniques and ideas of soil
moisture and temperature sensors for better decision making using GIS, each time it
is required and for every situation. The results have less human involvement thereby
reducing errors. Also saving on time and cost will increase the use of proposed
system for watering the less appropriate lands for better crops yield. GIS based
standalone application that will enable agricultural professionals using wireless
technology to collect the data from crop field ,transferring it to the computer
thereby generating soil moisture and temperature map of the area and designing
of variable rate irrigation system by using GIS techniques.
