Proximal Soilsens Technology: Improving Crop yield through IoT enabled Soil Monitoring System
According to a recent research, India uses 80 per cent of the available water for agriculture, out of which 40 per cent is wasted. This is due to over irrigation, which leads to leaching of nutrients from the soil, contaminating ground water and ultimately reduces crop yield. With an aim of improving water use efficiency in the agricultural fields, increasing the crop yield, and making the agriculture sector more profitable and sustainable, Mumbai based Proximal Soilsens Technology Pvt Ltd has developed a low cost IoT enabled soil monitoring system, embedded with the soil moisture, soil temperature soil ambient and ambient temperature sensors.By deploying this system, farmers can use optimum amount of water as per the crop and soil requirements and in case of limited water resources, farmers can water the fields only at critical phase of the crop cycle, thus not affecting the overall yield. Moreover, this system helps farmers with crop disease prediction using data mining techniques.
Easily Deployable System
Soilsens is the only company in the country to develop its own soil moisture sensors embedded in its soil monitoring system. Soilsens’ system can be easily deployed in agricultural farms, poly-houses, research/ agricultural labs for controlled irrigation. Once this IoT enabled system is deployed in a field, it starts monitoring the parameters of the soil and collects data about the soil moisture, temperature etc. The data collected from all sensors are logged into mobiles using GSM and are made available on cloud for further analysis. The mobile application associated with this system sends timely alerts to farmers on optimum irrigation such as “when to irrigate” and “how much to irrigate?” which helps them conserve water, avoid over irrigation and improve crop yields. Avoiding over irrigation ultimately helps in protecting crops from diseases, water and electricity
conservation and prevention of nutrients leaching in soil. In case of erratic power supply, the irrigation equipment such as sprinklers, drip, pumps etc. can be operated through this mobile app.
“The Soilsens system will help farmers save water and improve yield. I believe this disruptive technology will create a huge social impact in agricultural community across the country,” opines Dr. R.P.Gajbhiye, Professor of Horticulture from College of Agriculture, Nagpur.
Soilsens has also developed an Automatic Weather Station (AWS) that sends the real-time weather parameters to the data cloud. The company has also indigenously developed a portable and frequency based soil moisture sensor that analyses the moisture in the soil with Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) for intensive calibration. “We have indigenously built a Portable Soil moisture system that acts as a monitoring system with automatic data recording, for marginal farmers,” affirms Dr. Rajul Patkar, CEO of Proximal Soilsens.
Dr. Rajul wanted to provide low cost sensors for agriculture, when she was pursuing her PhD at IIT Bombay. Therefore, after completing her PhD, she joined hands with three other PhD students and established Proximal Soilsens Pvt. Ltd. “We provide handholding support and training to our farmers even after the product deployment phase,” concludes Dr. Rajul.
“The Soilsens system will help farmers save water and improve yield. I believe this disruptive technology will create a huge social impact in agricultural community across the country,” opines Dr. R.P.Gajbhiye, Professor of Horticulture from College of Agriculture, Nagpur.
Automatic Weather Station and Portable Soil Moisture System
Proximal Soilsens has indigenously developed its system at an affordable cost compared to other commercially available systems so that farmers and agricultural institutes across the country that cannot spend on high cost imported products can use it
Soilsens has also developed an Automatic Weather Station (AWS) that sends the real-time weather parameters to the data cloud. The company has also indigenously developed a portable and frequency based soil moisture sensor that analyses the moisture in the soil with Time Domain Reflectometer (TDR) for intensive calibration. “We have indigenously built a Portable Soil moisture system that acts as a monitoring system with automatic data recording, for marginal farmers,” affirms Dr. Rajul Patkar, CEO of Proximal Soilsens.
Dr. Rajul wanted to provide low cost sensors for agriculture, when she was pursuing her PhD at IIT Bombay. Therefore, after completing her PhD, she joined hands with three other PhD students and established Proximal Soilsens Pvt. Ltd. “We provide handholding support and training to our farmers even after the product deployment phase,” concludes Dr. Rajul.
