Development of a low cost nitrate detection soil sensor

Agriculture is one of the key sectors in India wherein harmful pesticides and fertilizers are heavily used nowadays. They contribute largely to the soil and water contamination. Usually, farmers make excessive use of these supplies which in return can cause negative effects to the environment. So watching the agricultural environment is important in order to maintain the stability of the soil. Modern measures to tackle these issues of contamination generally need tough operational ways which involve heavy investments. This study gives a substitute method for the detection of contamination by designing an array based sensor with the combination of capacitive and inductive electromagnetic fields for monitoring the content in agricultural soils and contamination. The purpose is to fabricate this array design of the sensor on printed circuit board (double-sided PCB FR4). A set of demonstrations were conducted to study the characteristic features of the sensor. The performance of the system was observed where the sensors were tested with various soil samples mixed with a different concentration of nitrate in proportion with water. Based on the results obtained, the sensor array can be used to measure contamination in the soils and the data obtained from the experiment is compared.