Microcontroller-based Irrigation System for Experimental Design of Mung Bean Sprouts Cultivation

The inadequate supply of fresh mung bean sprouts of a certain fast food restaurant in the Philippines is primarily due to their conventional method of sprouting mung beans. The traditional method employs excessive and improper timing of watering that results to unhealthy mung bean sprouts and unpleasant smell in the vessels. Through the use of automated irrigation system based on microcontroller, it assures the accurate timing and amount of watering. Temperature, amount of water and watering frequency are the factors established that contributes to the growth of mung bean sprouts. The experimental set up contains vessels with dimension of 4.5 × 6 inches each. In addition, the samples are 50 grams per vessel and soaked first for 12 hours and drained. Using design of experiment three factorial interaction approach run in design expert software, the relation of three factors are analyzed. The plot of residuals forms approximately a straight line indicating that it does not violate the normality assumption of ANOVA. Using ANOVA, the amount of water and water frequency are determined to be the significant factors. Finally, a regression model is extracted to make predictions of the response for given levels of each factor.