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Global Positioning System (GPS) in Precision Agriculture
Yield Monitoring and Mapping: The most common use of GPS in agriculture is for yield mapping and variable rate fertilizer/pesticide applicator for yield mapping harvester travel speed and flow rate of material are measured. The yield is calculated as
Yield/area = (Flow rate) / (Harvester travel speed) x (effective harvesting width)
Grain yield monitors continuously measure and record the flow of grain in the clean grain elevator of a combine. When linked with a GPS receiver, yield monitors can provide data necessary for yield maps. Yield measurements are essential for making sound management decision.
The yield maps are used to determine the cause of crop/soil variability. This in turn helps to make decision regarding space and time variable management practices. The variable rate applicators execute these management decisions. The variable rate applicator has basically three components:
- Control computer
- Locator and
- Actuator
The control computer coordinates the field operation. It has a map of desired activity as a function of geographic location. It receives the equipment’s current location from the locator, which has a GPS in it, and decides what to do based upon the map in its memory or data storage. It then issues the command to the actuator, which does the input application (Ravi and Jagadeesha, 2002).
Precision Agriculture: Indian Scenario
Precision Agriculture has been mostly confined to developed countries. Reasons of limitations of its implementation in developing countries like India are: a) Small holdings b) Heterogeneity of cropping systems and market imperfections c) Lack of technical expertise knowledge and technology d) High cost. In India major problem is the small field size. More than 58 percent of operational holdings in the country have size less than 1ha. Only in the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana and Gujarat more than 20 per cent of agricultural lands have operational holding size of more than 4 ha. There is a scope of implementing precision Agriculture for crops like, rice and wheat especially in the states of Punjab and Haryana. Commercial as well as Horticultural crops shows a wider scope for precision Agriculture.
Adoption of precision agriculture needs combined efforts on behalf as scientists, farmers and government. The following strategies may help in the successful adoption of precision agriculture in the country.
- Creation of multidisciplinary teams involving agricultural scientists in various fields, engineers, manufacturers and economists to study the overall scope of precision agriculture.
- Formation of farmer’s co-operatives since many of the precision agriculture tools are costly (GIS, GPS, RS, etc.).
- Government legislation restraining farmer using indiscriminate farm inputs and thereby causing ecological/environmental imbalance would induce the farmer to go for alternative approach.
- Pilot study should be conducted on
farmer’s field to show the results of precision agriculture
implementation.
Future prospects of precision agriculture and GPS in India:
Advances in GIS, GPS and Remote Sensing technologies are changing the way we will look at precision farming. The success of precision farming will be measured by the type of information that is provided to the farmer, how quickly the farmers were convinced. Competition for the farmers business should help in making the success a reality.
The study on precision agriculture has been initiated in many research institutions. For Instance space Application. Center (ISRO), Ahmedabad has started experiment in the Central Potato Research Station farm at Jalandhar, Punjab to study the role of remote sensing, GIS and GPS in mapping the variability. M.S. Swaminathan foundation, Chennai, in collaboration with NABARD, has adopted a village in Dindugal district of Tamilnadu for variable rate input application. IARI, New Delhi has drawn up plans to do precision agriculture experiments in the institute’s farm. Project Directorate for Cropping Systems Research (PDCSR), Modipuram, and Meerut (UP) has initiated a project on precision agriculture in collaboration with Central Institute of Agriculture Engineering (CIAE), Bhopal.
The use of GPS in Agriculture is limited but it is fair to expect wide spread use of GPS in future. Recently a GPS-based crop duster (precision GPS Helicopter), which can spray an area as small as 4 X 4 mtr. is attracting great attention. Some progressive farmers are now beginning to use GPS for recording observations. Such as weed growth, unusual plant stress, colouring and growth conditions, which can then be mapped with a GIS programmes. In the years to come, GPS system role in precision agriculture may help the Indian farmers to harvest the fruits of frontier technologies without compromising the quality of land and produce.
References
- Ancha Srinivasan, 1999, Precision farming in Asia: Progress and prospects. Precision Agriculture- Proceedings of the 4th international conference. PP. 623-640.
- Ravi, N. and Jagadeesha, C.J., 2002, Precision Agriculture, Training course on Remote Sensing and GIS Applications in Agriculture, May 27th –7th June, 2002, RRSSC- Bangalore, pp: 225-228.
- Ajai, 2002, GPS and its applications, Training course on Remote Sensing and GIS Applications in Agriculture, May 27th –7th June, 2002, RRSSC- Bangalore, pp: 89-99.
- Colvin, T.S. and Kerkman, E. W., 1999, Precision Agriculture Requires precise tuning. Precision Agriculture- Proceedings of the 4th international conference. PP. 1083-1088.
- Mark, A. Mc Govern, T. Hirose, B.K. Hopp
and T. E. Huffman, 1999, Agriculture Ground Truthing GPS, GIS,
system. Precision Agriculture- Proceedings of the 4th
international conference. PP. 975-978.
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