Environmental friendly and low cost monitoring system for plant and agriculture fields

The constantly growing global population is to be sustainably supplied with food. Due to climatic changes and increasing problems in protecting the environment, farmers are faced with great challenges. In order to automate, specify and simplify processes, reliable decision-making bases for the control of irrigation, fertilization and plant protection measures with a close-meshed database are required. This can be achieved with cost-efficiently produced and environmentally friendly sensor systems for monitoring cultivated areas. Such a monitoring system is currently being developed, first laboratory samples are available and are being tested step by step in laboratory and field. The single sensor devices consist of a miniaturized electronic module with single-chip radio system, sensors for measuring temperature, soil tension, in the near future leaf wetness and nitrate. The sensors and the electronic module are fabricated from materials that are biodegradable or inert with a minimum amount of metal and ceramic and allow for remaining them on the field when harvesting. The device is powered by a biodegradable zinc-manganese dioxide battery. For wireless communication, a printed antenna on a wood carrier is used. A gateway collects the data transmitted by the distributed sensor devices and brings it to the internet to a central server running an expert system. The technologies used for the assembly, such as roll-to-roll and screen printing, and the materials used, such as wood and paper, enable inexpensive and partly biodegradable sensors that are applied to the field once per growing season in high density. This enables fine-mesh, site-specific treatments and a further reduction in water, fertiliser and pesticide use.