Recent Web Applications in the Agro‐Food Sector

Ikechukwu Aligbe

Department of Agricultural Engineering

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM)

 Introduction

A wireless sensor network is a system comprised of radio frequency (RF) transceivers, sensors, transducer, amplifier, microcontrollers, power source, signal conditioning and processing units. Wireless sensor networks with self-organizing, self-configuring, self-diagnosing and self-healing capabilities (smart sensor wireless network) have been developed to solve problems or to enable applications that traditional technologies could not address. The availability of these technologies has made it possible to find many new applications that could not have been considered possible before.
Wireless sensor technology is still at its early development stage. Applications of wireless sensors in agricultural and food industries are still rare.
Wireless technologies have been under rapid development during recent years. Types of wireless technologies being developed range from simple IrDA that uses infrared light for short-range, point-to-point communications, to wireless personal area network (WPAN) for short range, point-to multi-point communications, such as Bluetooth and
ZigBee, to mid-range, multi-hop wireless local area network (WLAN), to long-distance cellular phone systems, such
as GSM/GPRS and CDMA.
The introduction of wireless network have in overall save cost , environmentally friendly, reduce wiring and labour, and efficient control of the equipment through effective monitoring of different parameters (Temperature, Pressure, Energy, Gas, Steam, Humidity, etc.) and the environment. Most food and agricultural companies have benefited immensely in the use of wireless sensors. Wireless sensors have also made it to monitor dangerous, hazardous, unwired or remote areas and locations. This technology provides nearly unlimited installation flexibility for sensors and increased network robustness. Furthermore, wireless technology reduces maintenance complexity and costs.
Wireless sensor networks allow faster deployment and installation of various types of sensors because many of these networks provide self-organizing, self-configuring, self-diagnosing and self-healing capabilities to the sensor nodes.
Some of them also allow flexible extension of the network and as wires are deleted from the transmission, reliability of signal transmission is enhanced. In addition to above mentioned; with the aid of wireless sensor technology, agricultural food produce from a small and uncoordinated network of producers and consumers to a globalized system of well coordinated and internationally regulated global trade in commodities between mainstream market conventions, rooted in efficiency, standardization, and price competition.
In a wireless sensor network setting, a node in the network can be formed by a sensor/data acquisition board
and a mote (processor/radio board). These nodes can communicate with a gateway unit, which has the capability
of communicating with other computers via other networks, such as a LAN, a WLAN, a WPAN and the Internet.
Wireless sensor boards available on the market include accelerometers, barometric pressure sensors, light sensors, GPS modules, temperature sensors, humidity sensors, acoustic sensors, magnetic RPM sensors, magnetometers, pyroelectric IR occupancy detectors, solar radiation sensors, soil moisture sensors, soil temperature sensors, wind speed sensors, rainfall meters and seismic sensors. (N. Wang et.al)

Applications of wireless sensors and networks in agriculture and food production

Application of wireless sensors and sensor networks in agriculture and food industry is not at the expected peak, there are still more research work being carried out and to be carried out.
The recent introduction of web technology in agricultural and food sectors has yielded a great positive result in the following areas listed below:
(1) Environmental monitoring
(2) Precision agriculture
(3) Machine and process control
(4) Building and facility automation
(5) Traceability or tracking systems

Environmental Monitoring:
Wireless sensor and web networking has made it easy and possible in field measurements of environment variables (weather data and geo-referenced water quality data).
In Weather monitoring, installation of wireless sensor network in an orchard or plantation, one can remotely report the temperature, moisture and sunlight intensity to a central PC at a chosen time interval, helping in ensuring a good management in terms of frost, fertilizer application, irrigation and ensuring a good harvest method.

Figure1. Variable rate herbicides + real time sensor(Constatino)

Also recently there has been a report of solar-powered wireless sensor network system, providing weather Information in fields. A remote application server relayed data from the sensor network to local users via a WLAN and remote users via cellular network and the Internet.
Figure1. Variable rate herbicides + real time sensor(Constatino)
Geo-reference environmental data monitoring uses a wireless prototype system to acquire, store, display and transmit real-time, geo-referenced environmental data between multiple field teams and remote locations. In the system, field teams with handheld data collection units communicated to each other or with a field station server through a WLAN. The field station server combined information received from all the teams and periodically reported to a remote web/data server through a dual-frequency mobile phone (GSM/GPRS service at 900MHz and 1.9 GHz). This development has demonstrated a great potential to improve efficiency and precision for field environment data collections. (N. Wang et.al)

Precision Agriculture:
Precision Agriculture is an integrated information- and production-based farming system that is designed to increase long term, site-specific and whole farm production efficiency, productivity and profitability while minimizing unintended impacts on wildlife and the environment. In another word it is a site-specification management whereby decisions on resource application and agronomic practices are improved to better match soil and crop requirements as they vary in the field.
Wireless sensors have been used in precision agriculture to assist the following Spatial data collection Precision irrigation Variable-rate technology Supplying data to farmers
Spatial data collection is achieved by the use mobile field data acquisition system such as Global positioning system (GPS), Geographic information system (GIS), Remote sensing, Variable rate technologies (sensors, controllers and others), Analysis of geo-referenced data (geo-statistics, spatial econometrics, multi-factor analysis, cluster analysis and CART, among others) to collect data for crop management and spatial-variability studies. The system consisted of a data collection vehicle, a manager vehicle and data acquisition and control systems on farm machines, being able to conduct local field survey (mapping) and to collect data of soil water availability, soil compaction, soil fertility, biomass yield, leaf area index, leaf temperature, leaf chlorophyll content, plant water status, local climate data, insect-disease-weed infestation, grain yield, etc. The data collection vehicle retrieved data from farm machines via a WLAN and analyzed, stored and transmitted the data to the manager vehicle wirelessly.

“Lee et al. (2002) developed a silage yield mapping system, which included a GPS, load cells, a moisture sensor and a Bluetooth wireless communication module. The moisture sensor and the Bluetooth transmitter were installed on the chopper. Signal from the moisture sensor was sent to a Bluetooth receiver on a host PC at a data rate of 115 kbps and was used to correct the yield data and Mahan andWanjura (2004) cooperated with a private company to develop a wireless, infrared thermometer system for in-field data collection. The system consisted of infrared sensors, programmable logic controllers and low power radio transceivers to collect data in the field and transmit it to a remote receiver outside the field. (N. Wang et.al)
Precision irrigation has also been made a possibility, by which a remotely controlled automatic irrigation system is implemented to cover a certain hectare of land. Communication within these wireless sensors is achieved with the aid of wireless WLAN (wireless local area network) network.
Figure2. The three stages of precision agriculture ( Evandro et.al)
The recent development of a system consisting of an input module for GPS and real-time sensor data acquisition, a decision module for calculating the optimal quantity and spread pattern for a fertilizer, pesticides, and an output module to regulate their application rate. Data communications among the modules were established using a Bluetooth network. With the aid of wireless web networking, it has provided information on pest and disease infestation and weather forecasts enabling farmers to download a direct the information via Internet and use them for operation scheduling, such as precision farming etc.

Machine and process control:
M2M is a technology that supports wired or wireless (WPAN, WLAN, cellular systems) communications from machine to machine, from machine to mobile or from mobile to machine. M2M technology greatly enhances automation of a system (a machine system, a process or a business) and integrates discrete assets within the system with an IT system. This concept has been developed mainly for industry and businesses. Below are some of the areas of application of M2M; Vehicle guidance Machinery management Robotic control Process control Green house control
Animal feeding and outdoor facilities

Traceability systems:
Due to the increasing demand for security and safety, complete documentations for food products, from field to customer, have become increasingly demanding. RFID (Radio frequency identification technology) has been accepted as a new technology for a well-structured traceability system on data collecting, and human, animal and product tracking (Sahin et al., 2002).
RFID is a growing technology and is presently being applied in the following areas; Animal identification and health monitoring, food packaging, food inspection and quality monitoring, transportation, Virtual fencing and theft tracking device

Conclusion

Wireless sensor s networking rapidly proliferate in a wide variety of applications and industries, the cost of sensors has been continuously declining. The recent trend of developing new standards with the help of industry alliances has greatly helped the industry move toward lower cost, higher functioning wireless systems. Development and adoption of wireless technologies remain fragmented with no single supplier or pervasive application dominating.
Figure3. Projected price reduction for wireless sensor products (Crossbow Technology Inc., 2004).
Also the use of this web application has been hindered in mostly the developing world where poverty looms and no service providers available to support the local farmers.

References

Ning Wang a,∗, Naiqian Zhang b, Maohua Wang c Wireless sensors in agriculture and food industry—Recent development and future perspective. MS1-027, Department of Bioresource Engineering, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Que., Canada H9X 3V9
b Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA
c China Agricultural University, Beijing, PR China
Received 18 March 2005; received in revised form 12 September 2005; accepted 21 September 2005
Sahin, E., Dallery, Y., Gershwin, S., 2002. Performance evaluation of a traceability system: an application to the radio frequency identification
technology. In: Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, vol. 3, Yasmine Hammamet, Tunisia
Crossbow Technology Inc., 2004. Smart Dust/Mote Training Seminar. Crossbow Technology, Inc., San Francisco, California,
Evandro Chartuni1, Francisco de Assis de Carvalho2, Daniel Marçal2 and Emilio Ruz3 1 Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation (EMBRAPA), Brazil, evandro.mantovani@embrapa.br 2 UFV, Brazil, facpinto@ufv.br, queiroz@ufv.br 3 PROCISUR-IICA, emilio.ruz@iica.int
James Taylor & Brett Whelan General Introduction to Precision Agriculture Australian Centre for Precision Agriculture www.usyd.edu.au/su/agric/acpa
Constantino Valero, Pilar Barreiro. Precision Agriculture, an overview ETSI Agrónomos, Universidad Politecnica de Madrid .