Precision agriculture concentrates on providing the means for observing, assessing and controlling agricultural practices. This article describes an experiment in field crop production, referred to as Lofar Agro. The example application being deployed deals with fighting phytophtora in a potato field. It concerns as well pre- and post-production aspects of agricultural enterprises.
The development and associated attack of the crop depends strongly on the climatological conditions within the field. The main goal of monitoring is to reveal when the crop is at risk of developing the disease and let the farmer treat the field or parts of it with fungicide only when absolutely needed. In addition to the agronomic experiment, we wish to gather data on the behavior of a wireless sensor net.
150 sensor boards, similar to the Mica2 motes from Crossbow2, are installed in a parcel for monitoring the crop. The nodes are manually localized so that a map of the parcel can be created. The TNOdes are equipped with sensors for registering the temperature and relative humidity. Earlier deployments have shown that the radio range is dramatically reduced when the potato crop is flowering.
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