Abstract:
In order to provide suitable soil moisture conditions timely and accurately for the growth of crops, the study developed a real time soil moisture monitoring and precision irrigation systems. The hardware, which was used in this study, such as soil moisture sensors, data acquisition and control modules and so on, was designed independently with independent intellectual property rights. This system took irrigation district as the management unit to set up the soil moisture sensors and irrigation equipments, and implemented automatic acquisition of soil moisture information. The startup and shutdown of the irrigation system were controlled automatically or manually by the upper and lower limits of soil moisture in the crop growth periods. Through fixed sprinkler irrigation, drip irrigation and subsurface irrigation, the irrigation water was transformed directly into the root zone of crops to meet the demand for water in the growing periods of the crop, which greatly saved water, increased crop production, and effectively improve crop quality. This system was running stability, good extensible and cost efficient, its relative deviation with the conventional method was less than 5%, which made it an effective and applicable tool.