DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION OF A SOIL MOISTURE DETECTOR WITH AUTOMATIC SMS NOTIFICATION SYSTEM

CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the study
Through the ages agriculture production systems have benefited from the incorporation of technological advances primarily developed for other industries. The industrial age brought mechanization and synthesized fertilizers, the technological age offered genetic engineering and now the information age brings the potential for Precision Agriculture (Rasher, 2001). Precision agriculture (PA) , satellite farming or Site Specific Crop Management (SSCM) can be defined as a set of technologies that have helped propel agriculture into the computerized information-based world, and is designed to help farmers get greater control over the management of farm operations (Gandonou, 2005). One of the key technologies of precision agriculture is the control and accurate measurement of the soil moisture. For decades, the subject of soil moisture has been of great interest in agricultural system. Prior to advancement in agriculture, farmer has picked up and felt a handful of soil to determine the best time to plow his fields and equally to manually determine the amount of moisture content of the soil. Soil moisture measurement ranges from the method of feeling the soil to the use of complicated electronic equipment using radioactive substances. Such method includes the use of soil sensor. Since the inception of precision agriculture, soil sensors have been used to measure the soil moisture level. The soil moisture sensors measure the volumetric water content of the soil by using electrical resistance, dielectric constant, etc. The farmer uses the information obtained from the soil moisture sensor to make
2