Umudike Journal of Engineering and Technology

The increase in the world population and the effect of global warming which enhances the rate of drought might cause freshwater supply crisis for agriculture in many part of the world. A fibrous capillary irrigation system with internet of things integration is been proposed to help achieve high water saving agriculture. This irrigation system uses a watering method that supplies water directly into the root zone with minimal loss of water that is not absorbed by the plants. However, the fibrous system suffers a problem of managing irrigation system efficiently to maximise its potential. Thus, this study aims to develop a fuzzy control strategy to enhance the fibrous capillary irrigation system management in precision irrigation for high water saving. The performance of various fibrous interface design was investigated on wetting zone pattern in capillary irrigation to ensure that optimum irrigation is exerted in the root zone of the plant. An Internet of things based Decagon weather station for computation of Evapotranspiration ratio and VH400 moisture content sensor for monitoring the volumetric water content of the soil, were used to control the water supply depth (Δh) autonomously using a fuzzy control algorithm implemented on Arduino Mega. The soil moisture content shows that the fuzzy controlled delta H (Δh) is able to compensate the reduction of water in the crop medium that took place due to the plant water uptake which changes daily. The result proves that the dynamics of the water supply depth has effect on the water absorption flow rate, wetting pattern, soil water content and cumulative infiltration which are proportional to the water supply depth decrement. This research has contributed to a new technique of controlling the capillary irrigation system with the adaptation to the crop demand. It offered a high water-saving irrigation system and it is able to manage the irrigation volume based on the crop demand.