Speaking Plant Approach for Automatic Fertigation System in Greenhouse

Nowadays, many vegetables are grown inside greenhouses in which environment is controlled and nutrition can be supplied through water supply using electrical pump, namely fertigation. Dosage of nutrition in water for many vegetable plants are also known so that by controlling water supply all the needs for the plants to grow are available. Furthermore, water supply can be controlled using electrical pump which is activated according to the plants conditionin relation with water supply. In order to supply water and nutrition in the right amount and time, plants condition can be observed using a CCD camera attached to image processing facilities to develop a speaking plant approach. In this study, plants development during their growing period are observed using image processing. Three populations of tomato plants, with less, enough, and exceeded nutrition in water, are captured using a CCD camera every three days, and the images were analyzed using a developed computer program for the height of plants. The results showed that the development of the plants can be monitored using this method. After that, the response of plant growth in the same condition was monitored, and the response was used as input for the fertigation system to turn electrical pump automatically on and off, so the fertigation system could maintain the growth of the plants.