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Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture

Extreme weather phenomena are on the rise due to ongoing climate change. Therefore, the need for irrigation in agriculture will increase, although it is already the largest consumer of water, a valuable resource. Soil moisture sensors can help to use water efficiently and economically. For this reas...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Menne, David, Hübner, Christof, Trebbels, Dennis, Willenbacher, Norbert
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9227105/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35746247
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22124465
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author Menne, David
Hübner, Christof
Trebbels, Dennis
Willenbacher, Norbert
author_facet Menne, David
Hübner, Christof
Trebbels, Dennis
Willenbacher, Norbert
author_sort Menne, David
collection PubMed
description Extreme weather phenomena are on the rise due to ongoing climate change. Therefore, the need for irrigation in agriculture will increase, although it is already the largest consumer of water, a valuable resource. Soil moisture sensors can help to use water efficiently and economically. For this reason, we have recently presented a novel soil moisture sensor with a high sensitivity and broad measuring range. This device does not measure the moisture in the soil but the water available to plants, i.e., the soil water potential (SWP). The sensor consists of two highly porous (>69%) ceramic discs with a broad pore size distribution (0.5 to 200 μm) and a new circuit board system using a transmission line within a time-domain transmission (TDT) circuit. This detects the change in the dielectric response of the ceramic discs with changing water uptake. To prove the concept, a large number of field tests were carried out and comparisons were made with commercial soil water potential sensors. The experiments confirm that the sensor signal is correlated to the soil water potential irrespective of soil composition and is thus suitable for the optimization of irrigation systems.
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spelling pubmed-92271052022-06-25 Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture Menne, David Hübner, Christof Trebbels, Dennis Willenbacher, Norbert Sensors (Basel) Article Extreme weather phenomena are on the rise due to ongoing climate change. Therefore, the need for irrigation in agriculture will increase, although it is already the largest consumer of water, a valuable resource. Soil moisture sensors can help to use water efficiently and economically. For this reason, we have recently presented a novel soil moisture sensor with a high sensitivity and broad measuring range. This device does not measure the moisture in the soil but the water available to plants, i.e., the soil water potential (SWP). The sensor consists of two highly porous (>69%) ceramic discs with a broad pore size distribution (0.5 to 200 μm) and a new circuit board system using a transmission line within a time-domain transmission (TDT) circuit. This detects the change in the dielectric response of the ceramic discs with changing water uptake. To prove the concept, a large number of field tests were carried out and comparisons were made with commercial soil water potential sensors. The experiments confirm that the sensor signal is correlated to the soil water potential irrespective of soil composition and is thus suitable for the optimization of irrigation systems. MDPI 2022-06-13 /pmc/articles/PMC9227105/ /pubmed/35746247 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22124465 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Menne, David
Hübner, Christof
Trebbels, Dennis
Willenbacher, Norbert
Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture
title Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture
title_full Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture
title_fullStr Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture
title_full_unstemmed Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture
title_short Robust Soil Water Potential Sensor to Optimize Irrigation in Agriculture
title_sort robust soil water potential sensor to optimize irrigation in agriculture
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9227105/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35746247
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s22124465
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