To develop an efficient system for tea production management, the first and foremost requirement is quick availability of accurate data. Manual decision making takes unusually long time even with the most sophisticated analytical techniques. Moreover, as geographical spread of tea gardens are huge and sometimes exceeds few hundred hectares, getting information about the entire garden through conventional methods would be time consuming. Quick decision making based on quality data at section (a garden unit varying in area) level in a tea garden can enhance tea production. Geoinformatics and spatial analysis algorithms provide a great opportunity to gather information of unknown locations in a tea plantation based on some known locations. The present work demonstrates the application of an integrated Wireless Sensors Network (WSN) system associated with GPS and GIS to achieve the goal of Smart Agriculture. In this study a portable WSN system has been developed for instant data generation on soil physico-chemical properties and provide decision support for tea plantation management. Soil pH, soil moisture and soil temperature were collected in selected locations in a tea garden and plotted on digital garden maps based on their GPS locations. Suitable interpolation algorithms were applied on the collected soil data to generate information about the soil properties in entire plantation. An empirical equation is being developed for each soil parameter to compensate the errors in their predicted values based on values in the sample locations. The present system is an attempt towards achieving the goal of implementation of precision agriculture in tea plantation management.

Date Published: 12 August 2014
PDF: 9 pages
Proc. SPIE 9229, Second International Conference on Remote Sensing and Geoinformation of the Environment (RSCy2014), 92290W (12 August 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2066366

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9229:
Second International Conference on Remote Sensing and Geoinformation of the Environment (RSCy2014)
Diofantos G. Hadjimitsis; Kyriacos Themistocleous; Silas Michaelides; Giorgos Papadavid, Editor(s)