Fog based Integrated Nutrient Management System for Macronutrients Recommendation

Agriculture is the most concerning Area of today, which plays a vital role in food production. The requirement of every crop is different from others. Therefore, resources like water and fertilizers should be used as per the crop requirement and the type of soil. This paper presents a framework to determine the deficiency of N, P, and K in the soil using an optical transducer that works on the principle of absorption of light by each nutrient and can convert light into current. The Arduino controller manipulates this output current as output voltage that can be evaluated to the content of N, P, and K into low, medium, or high. A comparison of these values with threshold values, which are already known, gives a recommendation for the supply of significant macronutrients NPK based on real-time monitoring by sending an SMS alert to the farmer to maximize the crop yield. Understanding soil nutrient variability helps to improve the ability to match fertilizers to the available resources. The proposed hardware prototype and software system can be programmed using a microcontroller based on Raspberry pi 3 using Python. Based on different available techniques, it is recommended that instead of using only chemical fertilizers alone, a combination of organic manure or bio-fertilizers and chemical or synthetic fertilizers will result in high crop yield as well as will help in sustaining soil health, thus reducing the harmful effect of synthetic fertilizers on the environment and people. The information in the paper will surely help farmers to implement the appropriate amount, rate, and combination of fertilizers.