A novel approach towards the design of an efficient embedded system for optimizing the usage of fertilizers

Agriculture is a chief source of livelihood for majority of Indians and has a great impact on the economy of the country. Use of fertilizers like urea, for increasing the yield of agricultural production is prevalent amongst the farmers. Several studies show that farmers have little control over usage of optimum level of fertilizers for optimal crop yield. Also, usage of fertilizers more than the requisite level produces crops with increased fertilizer content which upon consumption leads to several harmful diseases. Thus most of the edible crops cultivated are under high-fertilizer content setting. In this paper we present a system which shows how an efficient embedded fertilizer monitoring system can ensure millions of farmers to have information about the precise amount of fertilizer to be used for a particular soil type. The system is built with a raspberry pi as a host processor that is used to control and manipulate the sensors and a web database server that is used to validate and store data.