Publication:

Automatización del riego a partir de los parámetros hidrodinámicos del sustrato en un cultivo de arándanos

The Colombian agro-industrial sector has natural resources that allow it to establish itself as a prominent producer in the cultivation of blueberries and to achieve this, it becomes a primary objective to update its techniques in order to implement efficient processes in irrigation and fertilization tasks. New technologies contribute to this objective by providing control systems that ensure the integrity of the process, offering the possibility of being more competitive in the national and international market. The substrate as a physical support and medium through which water and nutrients are delivered, is a vital part in the development and production of a crop, to such an extent that knowing its physical characteristics allowed us to identify the dynamics of water and the optimal conditions for the plant. . In this work, an automated drip irrigation control system was designed and implemented, which, based on the hydrodynamic parameters of the substrate, ensures the availability of water and nutrients in the root zone of the plant. To achieve this objective, the substrate was modeled and characterized, a PI pressure control of the water and nutrient mixture and a system monitoring network were implemented, and two humidity controllers were proposed, which varied the irrigation times depending on the of the humidity response present for each one of the crop lines; Finally, their responses were compared and evaluated against a line where the farmer's traditional irrigation was maintained.