Feasibility Study on Informatization Agricultural Supporting System and Evaluation of its Validity

Feasibility Study on Informatization Agricultural Supporting System and Evaluation of its Validity

Takashi OKAYASU1*, Hiromichi YOSHIDA2, Andri Prima NUGROHO2, Muneshi MITSUOKA1, Eiji INOUE1

1Department of Agro-enviromental Sciences, Faculty of Agriculture Kyushu University, Fukuoka 812-8581, JAPAN

2Graduate School of Bioresource and Bioenvironmental Sciences, Kyushu University, Fukuoka 812-8581, JAPAN

*Corresponding Author: [email protected]

Abstrat Agriculture is a strictly influenced by climate, weather, soil conditions, crop types, and so on. Therefore, farmers have improved their own cultivation techniques and senses from their long-term experiences by repetition of cultivations. Authors have developed the informatization agricultural supporting system called “Agri-eye” using information communication technologies (ICT) to support the agricultural production system. In this article, feasibility studies of the developed informatization agricultural supporting system were conducted to verify its validity in real agricultural applications. The durability, possibility and efficiency of the developed system could be evaluated. Further the several problems of the current system were realized in the feasibility studies. Key words: Informatization agriculture, Agri-eye, Feasibility study

1. Introduction Agriculture is a complex system in general. Collection of agricultural information is important to evaluate and improve production system in agriculture. Especially field monitoring information such as air temperature, humidity, solar radiation, soil moisture content, EC, CO2 etc. is necessary not only to predict growth of crops, occurrence of pests, diseases, and so on. Therefore various field monitoring systems have been developed by many researchers up to present. Among them, Hirafuji and Fukatsu (Hirafuji, 2000; Fukatsu and Hirafuji, 2004, 2005) have proposed the web based field monitoring system called “Fieldserver” equipped with environmental monitoring sensors such as temperature, humidity, solar radiation, CO2, etc. and actuators for heaters, water sprinklers, etc. It is possible to construct the sensor network using the TCP/IP protocol. In this system, all the commands are fully transferred by using typical web browsers. Jiang et al. (2008) have developed the GSM-based remote wireless automatic field monitoring system to collect both environmental information and pest population dynamics. This monitoring system has also provided the monitoring data for users as the web-based application. On the other, authors have developed the simple field monitoring system (FMS) for agricultural production and management. This system has an independence function on data measurement and transmission and thus can reduce the installation cost. The validity of the system has been verified by various field monitoring tests in Japan.

On the other hand, work history recording and management in agriculture are also necessary for optimizing cultivation techniques and for reducing agricultural resources invested to the field. Moreover, in Japan, the average age of typical farmers exceeds 65 years old. It is very serious problem of Japan agricultural in the future. To record agricultural knowledge and techniques having the senior farmers is very important tasks to train new and young farmers. Many researchers have tried to develop work recording system in agriculture. Guan et al. (2006) have developed the recording system using mobile devices such as a mobile phone,

PDA, etc. Murakami et al. (2006) and Okayasu et al. (2010) have developed a recording system using barcodes and two-dimensional (QR) barcodes. In these systems, all the work data are entered by human hand. As the result these systems have not been spread over farmers yet whilst the installation const is very low in general because Japanese farmers have own mobile device as a communication way. Further Nanseki et al. (2007) developed a recording system using RFID (Radio Frequency IDentification) tags. This system is useful since the input operation of the work can be omitted while the arrangement of tags has to be considered well.

In this study, feasibility study of the developed informatization agricultural supporting system were conducted to verify its validity in real agricultural applications. The monitoring systems were installed in eight real fields, which have mainly cultivated tomato, cucumber, strawberry, paddy rice. We tried to evaluate the durability, possibility and efficiency of the developed system.

2 Informatization Agricultural Supporting System “Agri-eye” Figure 1 shows a conceptual diagram for the informatization agricultural supporting system “Agri-eye” developed by Authors (Okayasu et al., 2010). The system consists of environmental monitoring and actuation controller, a database, and application software. The application software include data management, sharing, visualizing and analyzing applications. All the data and application software are stored in a server in the Internet. As you can see, users are possible to utilize the applications and database using a PC and/or mobile devices such as mobile phones, PDA, smartphones.

Environmental monitoring Data providing Data management Data mining and analysis Environmental control Other related applications

Monitoring data

Data collection and transmit

Work history record

ハウス内温度の変化により機器を操作

作業履歴

ハウス内温度が10℃を下回る日が続いているので設定を変更

DataSharing

Data offering and exchange

Dat

a an

alyz

ing

and

exch

ange

InfomatizationAgriculturalDatabase

FIGURE 1: Informatization agricultural supporting system “Agri-eye”.

Figure 2 shows the monitoring node installed in real test fields and a demonstration of data offering applications. The monitoring node consists of a logger unit with a mail sender

function and various environment measurement sensors (temperature, humidity, solar radiation, soil moisture content, water levels, gases, and so on), and a rain-proof box in Fig. 2(a). The monitoring nodes are connected to a router or a gateway, which has been connected to Internet using a broadband network or 3G telecommunication network in the test field. The data logger unit (TriState ltd.) can automatically transmit the measurement data collected by the sensors to mail servers for a specific interval. All the measurement data stored in the mail server can be transferred to the database at fixed intervals using a data collection program installed in the application server. Figure 2(b) is an example of web applications to agriculture, which were developed by the SaaS (Software as a Service) cloud computing architecture. The developed monitoring system is capable of providing the environmental monitoring information to users through the Internet using not only the measured values but also images captured by a network CCD cam as shown in Fig. 2(b).

TemperatureHumidity

CO2Soil moisture content

etc.

Solarradiation

Loggerbox

Measurement data viewer

Statistical data of air temperature

Inside green house

Outside green houseHumidity

CO2

Average Max

Min

Field photo viewer(a) Environmental monitoring system (b) Web application to an environmental monitoring in an agriculture

FIGURE 2: Environmental monitoring system and a web application to agriculture.

3 Feasibility Study of Developed System To verify the durability, possibility and efficiency of the developed agricultural supporting system, the feasibility studies were carried out at the eight test field in the Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Oita prefectures, Japan. The monitoring tests have started from June, 2009 in Fukuoka sites and then spread the other test fields in the Nagasaki and Oita prefectures. Surveyed crops were a tomato, cucumber and strawberry in the greenhouse.

Figure 3 shows an utilization example of the environmental information in the greenhouse. The equipment inside the greenhouse such as wind fans, windows, heaters, etc. were controlled using sensors installed them. However the operation condition has to be set up by famer’s experience and special sense obtained by the previous own cultivations in general. The monitoring node would be useful for this purpose since the environmental information inside/outside the greenhouse can be always obtained and checked via the Internet. The optimization of production system and facility management, and discovery of mistakes would be able to do by incorporating the environmental information and work histories. However the input method for the work history using a mobile device could not work well. The reason was

how difficult it is to input when the daily works of the famer was busy. This point should be eliminated using other technologies.

Minimum temp. inside greenhouse became less than 10 ˚C.

Management:Temp. Control & Setting

Management:Temp. Control & Setting

Automatic window close20 ºC -> 17 ºC

Heater onAir t temp.: 10 ºC

Inside green house

Outside green houseAi

r tem

pera

ture

FIGURE 3. Example of a utilization of environmental information.

Window did not open at morning to keep humidity.

Window opened at morning after watering to furrow.

CO

2

Reduction of photosynthesis ability

Improvement of photosynthesis abilityin the morning

FIGURE 4: Improvement of farmer’s experience and sense.

An application of an improvement of farmer’s experience and sense is shown in Fig. 4. The cucumber farmers generally keep high humidity condition in the greenhouse to produce well-shaped cucumbers. To establish this, the farmers do not release windows even if the temperature in the greenhouse fulfills the window release condition. However to keep closing the window CO2 concentration in the greenhouse becomes very low since it is used by photosynthesis. This problem can be realized by using the measured environmental information. Therefore the farmer changed the opinion and then established new management method to control CO2 concentration efficiently.

On the other hand, As you can see in Fig. 4, the monitoring data lost between 17 and 18 May 2011. The current monitoring system did not install any electricity backup system to reduce the cost. However, we encountered outages due to heavy rains and human errors. To improve durability of the system, the electricity backup module using a solar and/or wind power unit has to be installed.

4 Conclusions In this study, the feasibility studies on application of the developed informatization agricultural supporting system to real field was conducted. The following results were obtained through this study.

1) The field monitoring system with the e-mail sender device has the advantages for availability, management and running costs comparing with the previous monitoring system.

2) The validity of the monitoring system was verified by the long term field monitoring test. However the system cannot continue to work without stop because of the electricity troubles. Thus any electricity backup modules using a solar and/or wind power unit have to be installed to improve the durability.

3) The work recording tests was also conducted for the tomato, cucumber and strawberry cultivation in the greenhouse. For all crops the work history could be recorded and confirmed by using the farmers’ mobile devices and also PC. By incorporating the environmental information and work histories the optimization of management and discovery of mistakes would be able to do.

On the other hand, we found several problems of the current system “Agri-eye” in the real utilization system. In the next generation system we will try to fix these problems using the improvement of current system and addition of other applications.

Acknowledgements This study was supported by the NoshoNavi research project commissioned from Ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries in Japan, the joint research project of Kyushu University, Acto-ichigo farm ltd. and Oita prefecture and the research grant of Itoshima City 2010 and 2011. Especially we would like to express a lot of thanks for the valuable supports and comments from Mr. Hirano in Kyushu University, Mr. Ono in Act-ichigo farrm, Mr. Abe and Mr. Shimizu in the Oita Prefecture and Mr. Kamo in the Camo green farm.

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