cultYvate partnered with ITC to automate farm irrigation for Telangana Tobacco farmers
The tobacco industry globally has been facing problems and issues such as exploitation of labour, the prevalence of child labour in hazardous work, pest infestation on farms, and poor management of farm activities
cultYvate provided a fully automated system for irrigating tobacco, based on crop water demand in real-time. The wireless solution collected soil moisture data through a sensor and irrigation was enabled with crop models processed on the cloud for varying soil conditions. The SMART irrigation system was used across 57 acres having 3 different types of soil (loamy sand, sandy loam and sandy clay loam for 20 farmers & 3 villages.
The solution included a combination of soil sensors, flow sensors and solenoid valves to arrive at precise watering. The smart valves are designed to be extremely energy efficient and are automatically controlled by intelligent algorithms to ensure near zero human intervention. This ensures fully automated water management based on varying field conditions each day. Sensors maintained the optimal soil moisture of 70% during the crop season enabling improved yield and crop quality.
