SCADA Platform for Regulated Deficit Irrigation Management of Almond Trees

Abstract

Recently, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems have become widely used in agricultural applications, particularly in conjunction with irrigation management systems that require calculated applications of water. The objective of this study is to present a new SCADA platform for the regulated deficit irrigation management of almond trees. This new platform implements a wireless architecture that ensures error-free communication among the irrigation system components with no need to maintain cables. The implemented SCADA application performs the following irrigation-related tasks: (1) based on the edaphoclimatic data from the parcel to be treated, an estimation of the crop water requirements, including the values required for drip irrigation scheduling, is computed; and (2) using the calculations from the previous step, the different components of the irrigation system, such as the electrovalves, pump system, variable frequency drive, and pressure alarms are placed under either automatic control or the control of manual activating actuators. The proposed platform was installed in a parcel of almond trees located at Fuente Alamo de Murcia, Spain, with half of the parcel configured with regulated deficit irrigation and the other half configured with conventional irrigation. The results demonstrate the benefits of using this new platform, as well as a method for reducing water consumption through the use of regulated deficit irrigation.