GrIDSense: Information, Communication and Dissemination System for Water, Pest / Disease Management for Citrus Crop

With changing climatic conditions the balance in agricultural resources of semi-arid tropics are largely affected. This has led to impacts on the socio economic condition of resource poor cultivators / farmers. Technological advances in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have achieved the capability to seamlessly gather real-time agro-meteorological and environmental data. In order to address the prevailing agriculture / horticulture related issues such as soil, water and pest / disease management, there is need for multi-modal information dissemination, real-time monitoring and robust agricultural data processing methodologies. A pilot study area in India from Vidarbha region of Maharashtra has been selected for field experimentation and addressing citrus crop related issues. The diseases (root rot, foot rot, die back, etc.) caused due to Phytophthora fungus species have large impact on both quality and quantity of regional orange production. Besides this, due to inefficient irrigation practices water resources of the region have depleted at very rapid pace and the region has been declared as overexploited zone. The study approaches to address these multidisciplinary issues in crop water and pest/disease management for yield improvement using Information Communication and Dissemination Technologies (ICDT's) such as wireless sensor network, mobile telephony, crowd-sourcing, remote sensing. An integrated model, called GrIDSense (Groundwater Irrigation Disease Sensing System), has been formulated to address various issues in four major inter-disciplinary sectors such as (a) groundwater and irrigation management, (b) smart sensor and drip irrigation system, (c) plant diseases and yield improvement and (d) integrated model and interoperable services. The proposed integrated approach is towards common goal of improving crop cultivation by addressing the crop water, pest / disease related issues besides making societal impact with ICDTs through research, curriculum and outreach activities. The study provides insights into overall methodological framework, evapotranspiration (ET) estimation using proximal sensing systems and initial survey on Citrus Leafminer (CLM) crop pest. Daily ET estimates using Hargreaves minimum data model has potential for crop water management. The preliminary survey on CLM pest incidence has indicated that average infection ranges between 33 to 46 per cent in the selected plots. There is need to consider the parameters (e.g. root stock, age of the crop, cultivation practices, etc.) and design stratified sampling methodology for studying effect of weather parameters on CLM infestation. Further, studies are planned on field level crop water requirement estimation and information dissemination through GrIDSense service platform.