Business Plan

Design and Development of Precision Agriculture

Information System for Bangladesh




Md Abdur Razzaque
Department of Computer Science & Engineering
University of Dhaka, Bangaldesh



Main objective(s) your project address
This project has three folds of objects, described as follows:

a) Irrigation
The water level of the fields varies with time and the requirement is also different for different
crops. Long time water logging is also harmful for crops as the underground minerals get
dissolved with water and make the environment saline. Efficient irrigation system is highly
desirable due to ever growing need for food and the diminishing water resources caused by
climate changes. The existing technologies for the irrigation management do not provide with
real-time information retrieval capability and thus limit both their applicability and effectiveness.
In this work, we investigate a wireless sensor network based underground water level
measurement and data collection, where the sensors are buried underground. Such a system has
the potential to help reduce water application to the agricultural fields through accurate
measurement of soil moisture status.

b) Soil Nutrition and Fertilization
Accurate measurements of soil nutrients are needed for efficient agricultural production,
including site-specific crop production, where fertilizer nutrient application rates are adjusted
spatially based on local requirements [8]. The type and requirement of soil nutrients is different
for different crops. If the required nutrient is not present in the soil for producing a crop, we
apply fertilizer to remove the deficiency. Mineral nutrients are divided into two groups,
depending on how much of it is required for normal growth and physical development.
Macronutrients: Comparatively they are needed in large quantities. 10 minerals are macro
nutrients, they are: - Nitrogen (N), Potassium (K), Calcium (Ca), Iron (Fe), Magnesium (Mg),
and Phosphorus (P).

Plants show special symptoms in case of deficiency of any element. These symptoms are called
Deficiency Symptoms or deficiency disease. We can ascertain the deficiency of any element by
observing these symptoms. If same crop is cultivated in the same field over the years, a particular
type of crop only consume a specific class of nutrients. As a result, that class of nutrients gets
diminished and other nutrients prevail in rich amount. Therefore, the balance of the soil is
destroyed and we need to apply huge amount of chemical fertilizer which is harmful for the
environment and threaten our ecological balance. Therefore, which nutrient is currently highly
prevalent in the soil is also an important factor to decide what to cultivate. In this project, we
deploy underground sensors for collecting various soil nutrition information from the fields and
determine both the appropriate crop to cultivate and the best artificial nutrient elements to apply
for better production.

(c) Web based Information System
We intend to develop a web based information system for the collected data so that it can be
made available to farmers, stakeholders, govt. officials, researchers for further use related to
precision agriculture system.
Project summary (This summary will be used to promote your project, please be clear and
concrete)
The agricultural production depends on many factors, including the seed and soil quality, the
amount of water and nutrition parameters and the artificial or natural nutrients from agro-
chemicals. Therefore, its a complex system involving multiple control parameters. The goal of
this project is to address the main issues and problems associated with Precision Agriculture.
The precision agriculture can have immense effect over the ecological and environmental
balance by using reduced and accurate level of water, fertilizer, herbicides along with farm
equipments. The sensor devices and GPRS based wireless data communication will be utilized
for data collection process and a web based information system will be developed for presenting
analyzed and processed information.
Publications, marketing materials and other dissemination efforts conducted by your
project
A grand ceremony was organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Governement of
Bangladesh for awarding the project grants to the recipients on 27 October, 2012 in Dhaka. In
that ceremony, many professors from different public and private universities in Bangladesh,
government officials, and scientist from different sectors were present there and appreciated our
project idea. The honorable prime minister of the Government of Bangladesh presided over the
ceremony.

This project collaborates with an agricultural research laboratory of Bangabandhu Sheikh
Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University (BSMRAU) where we visited several times and had
seminar and lab works together. An website has been developed recently for publication of our
project activities as well as the information repository of collected data.

A technical report and a research paper from the outcome of the project are now
underdevelopment. We hope by the end of June 2013, we will be able to complete writing of
technical report and research paper.
Technologies Used
Our project supports agricultural works with IT through the flow sequence shown in Figure 1
(Data Collection -> Data Storage -> Analysis and visualization - > Reports, Advice and Policy
formulation).


Technologies for input data:
Position and time information from mobile SIM with GPS functions
Soil moisture sensor
Soil nutrition sensor
Data mining scheme from the results of routine works
Materials management technology

Data Collection and Storage
Data generated from the sensor devices is first sent to a nearby sink, which is a wireless
communication circuitry having a mobile SIM, programmable microcontrollers, tiny processor,
small memory for temporary data storage purposes.
The sink then sends the collected data to a specific mobile SIM which is connected with a
centralized server through wireless mobile networks.
Thus, the data sensed by field sensors is stored in a centralized server. For reliability purposes,
multiple such servers and SIMs can be configured at the center.
Website from your organization
gnr.cse.univdhaka.edu
Most relevant activities conducted during the course of the project
1. Developed sensor for detecting Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K), and soil water
level detection.
2. Reading data from Nitrogen sensor (NO3-N and NH4-N) , Phosphorus (P), Potassium (K),
water level detection sensor efficiently.
3. Effectively transferring data from sensor to database
4. Accessing data from the database and presenting data in statistical format in the website
Background and justification for initiating the project
A. Significance of the proposed research:
Bangladesh is a small and developing country in the world. The activities and the
development programs in its IT sector are rapidly increasing. The country has stepped
into a new era of Digital World with a spectacular vision in digitalization. The
government has declared to achieve Digital Bangladesh by the year 2021, in which the
country will observe its golden jubilee. Every year, the government is spending a lot for
the digitalization of its organizations. Being agriculture based economic country, this
vision would be saddled by Precision Agriculture involving multidisciplinary initiatives
of agricultural informatics, agricultural development and entrepreneurship towards
building a hunger-free, resourceful and prosperous Bangladesh.
41 years into its victory of the Liberation War and despite its considerable effort in
reducing poverty during the past decades, Bangladesh remains one of the poorest in the
world. With 85% of the poor living in the countryside, poverty in Bangladesh is mostly at
rural areas. With a vast majority of the rural population engaged in agriculture,
agriculture and rural economy play a strategic role in accelerating economic growth and
alleviating poverty in Bangladesh.
Agricultural sector is the key contributors to the national GDP of Bangladesh. Around
33% of the total GDP of the country comes from the agricultural sector in our country.
But, most of the farmers of our country are still in lack of modern agricultural
knowledge. People having access to ICT have better access to information, which put
them in better position in economic activities. So, time has now come to exploit modern
tools available related to electronics and information technology for improved economic
and environmentally sustainable crop production. This goal is not new, but the adoption
of newly arrived technologies, like sensor networking, cloud computing, low cost
wireless information communication systems, etc., in agriculture fields would be a great
step toward the productivity improvements.
Precision agriculture can be defined as the improvement of crop performance and
environmental quality by applying technologies and agronomic principles for managing
spatial and temporal variability associated with all aspects of agricultural production.
Precision agriculture focuses to the optimization of the field level management. It aims to
solve problems that can be categorized into 3 groups:
a) Crop Science: The amount of fertilizer and pesticides needed, sufficient irrigation for
crops, soil nutrition and ingredients needed for a particular crop etc.
b) Environmental Protection: Reduction of environmental risks, minimization of the side
effect of applying fertilizer and pesticides, soil erosion etc.
c) Economics: Improvement of crop production with a relatively low cost, efficient way
of producing crop in a short period of time and compete with others in the market etc.
In this project, we investigate the problem of designing and implementing the
aforementioned services through latest sensor-based data collection systems, low cost
wireless data communication systems, the Internet and cloud computing technologies.
Such an integrated system would ensure the effective and efficient use of agricultural
information, electronics, communication and computing technologies for analyzing,
designing and implementing existing and innovative applications to help the agricultural
sector. Precision agriculture helps in dissemination of gathered information to the
farmers, mostly lived in rural areas, to use in their crop production methodologies and the
policy makers to plan long-term priorities.
B.
Most relevant outcomes achieved by your project
Most relevant outcomes that are achieved by the project are:

1. Data Mining and knowledge discovery
2. Prototype Definitions
3. Drafting of optimal planting plans
4. Profit-loss calculations for each plot of land
5. Soil water level analysis and generation of advices for the farmers
6. Soil nutrition analysis and generation of fertilization advice reports for the farmers
7. Optimization of applying pesticides and herbicides and advice generations accordingly
8. and policy Cultivated land records for the scientists makers
9. Reports for the production histories
10. Soil contamination reports
11. Many more analytical reports required both by the farmers and the policy makers
Awards and distinctions received by your organization in the past
We have got a research project grants from Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) for
evaluating some of the parts of our project.
Explain why this project deserves the prize
This project intends to increase the socio-economic development of Bangladesh, poverty
alleviation, and efficient utilization of the resources.
If the project is implemented, the crop production size can be increased through optimized use
of the land, fertilizer and pesticides needed for the crops.
It will also decrease environmental pollution through judicious use of the agro-chemicals.
The irrigation system of our precision agriculture would decrease the soil salinity and thus
increase its productivity.
Agriculture is the largest source of employment for skilled and unskilled labors of our country.
If our project is implemented, more agro-educated employees will be motivated to work for the
development of our crop production system.
The web based information and decision control system in our project would help to decrease
agriculture system monitoring overhead for the farmers as well as for the field workers and the
policy makers.
Since our project decreases the operation overhead of the agriculture crop production
monitoring and management system, the women workers may also get involved in precision
agriculture system.

We believe that the abovementioned points are the crucial for our country and our project would
work as a first step toward the digitalization process of the country.

Source: http://isif.asia/projects/projects/view/329