Greenroof Irrigation Using Evapotranspiration for Alfalfa and Basil

Green roof is seen as a solution in providing vegetation in highly urbanized areas like Metro Manila. However, plants being subjected to a more direct sunlight could lead to wasteful amount of irrigation due to fear of them wilting out. With that in mind, this paper proposes a microcontroller-based automatic irrigation system for green roofs to minimize the excess amount of irrigation. The irrigation amount is determined using the Penmann-Monteith equation for evapotranspiration using a daily time step. All the modules and devices used in the system are calibrated to make sure that their readings would not deviate more than 5%. The experiment has shown that the ET-based irrigation system has a lower total water consumption compared to the manual-based water consumption. It has also shown that the plants in the ET-based system have grown better compared to the control.