Detection of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium (NPK) nutrients of soil using optical transducer

Abstract

An optical transducer is developed to measure and to detect the presence of Nitrogen (N), Phosphorus (P) and Potassium (K) of soil. Such transducer is needed to decide how much extra contents of these nutrients are to be added to the soil to increase soil fertility. This can improve the quality of soil and reduces the undesired use of fertilizers to be added to the soil. The N, P, and K value of the sample are determined by absorption light of each nutrient. The optical transducer is implemented as a detection sensor which consists of three LEDs as light source and a photodiode as a light detector. The wavelength of LEDs is chosen to fit the absorption band of each nutrient. The nutrient absorbs the light from LED and the photodiode convert the remaining light that is reflected by reflector to current. The system utilizes an Arduino microcontroller for data acquisition therefore the output from the transducer is converted into a digital display reading. Testing on various samples of soils, showed that the optical transducer can evaluate the amounts of NPK soil content as High, Medium and Low.