Water Management

Demand for potable water is also rising due to increasing water needs from the agriculture sector. This phenomenon, along with the effects of decades of misuse, poor management, and over-extraction from groundwater, lakes, and rivers, led United Nations (UN) to set up two specific goals (6.4 and 6.6) in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) related to water management. Our research group’s activity works actively together with agronomists and agricultural hydraulics experts in the development of autonomous low-power and long-range electronic systems to automatize the entire irrigation chain in the agrifood context. Systems are involved in the research of water needs for each specific cultivar in such a way as to find and satisfy its soil-plant equilibrium.

Actual autonomous prototypal devices have been installed in experimental fields to:

• • sense soil quantities as, for example, volumetric water potential, matric potential, and soil temperature to characterize the soil texture in such a way as to define the plant’s needs;
  • automatize the irrigation plants by employing innovative irrigation schemes in such a way as to maximize water efficiency.

Keywords:  Precision Agriculture, Precision Irrigation, Water Usage Optimization, Low-power Systems, Wireless Systems.

References:

• • Barezzi, M., Garlando, U., Pettiti, F., Nari, L., Gisolo, D., Canone, D., and Demarchi, D., “Long-Range Low-Power Soil Water Content Monitoring System for Precision Agriculture,” 2022 IEEE 13th Latin America Symposium on Circuits and System (LASCAS), Puerto Varas, Chile, 2022, pp. 1-4, doi: 1109/LASCAS53948.2022.9789070.
  • Gisolo, D., N’sassila, M., Gentile, A., Pettiti, F., Barezzi, M., Garlando, U., Nari, L., Ferraris, S., Demarchi, D., and Canone, D., “Wappfruit: a project for the optimisation of water use in agriculture,” EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-1485, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-1485, 2023.
  • Barezzi, M., Pettiti, F., Nari, L., Gisolo, D., Canone, D., Demarchi, D., and Garlando, U., “Long-Range Low-Power Electronic System for Drip Irrigation in Precision Agriculture,” 2023 IEEE Conference on Agrifood Electronics (CAFE), Torino, Italy, 2023, (Submitted).