Abstract:
Automated fertigation system is a highly advanced system for water and
fertilizer administration in irrigated agriculture. It promises the application of
water in right quantity along with right fertilizer at right time, thereby reducing
fertilizer loss and labour resulting in saving of money with the help of an
automated mechanism. The present study was undertaken to develop a timer
based automated fertigation system using an FIP and to evaluate the performance
of the system. Field evaluation of the developed automated fertigation system was
carried out by growing salad cucumber variety ‘Saniya’ in grow bags inside a poly
house located at Agricultural Research Station, Anakkayam. A comparative
evaluation was carried out between biometric observations and yield parameters
of the two sets of crop grown inside the polyhouse, one fertigated automatically
with the developed system and the other one with manual fertilizer application
and a third group of plants grown in the open field with manual fertilizer
application. Data collected was subjected to statistical scrutiny viz., ANOVA
(Analysis of Variance) and Student-t test. The main crop growth parameters like
height of the plant, days to first flowering, days to 50 percentage flowering, days
to initial budding, days to first harvest and leaf area index were observed. Yield
parameters viz. size of the fruit, number of fruits harvested per plant and average
yield were recorded during the study. Values of all these parameters were found to
be better for the crops grown inside the polyhouse with automated fertigation
compared to the other two. The developed system operates using solar panel
generating a power of 250 W on an average along with a battery, which makes the
system operations possible up to 4.4 days without sunshine. Hence it can be
concluded that the developed automated fertigation system can ensure better yield
for salad cucumber variety ‘Saniya’ grown inside the polyhouse.
