WSN Monitoring of Weather and Crop Parameters for Possible Disease Risk

Abstract: Tomato powdery mildew caused by Oidum Neolyco persici is an important weather- related disease that can potentially cause heavy losses in production quality and quantity each year and especially serious in climates with high rain fall and high relative humidity imparting long period of leaf wetness. Disease management generally requires frequent use of fungicides applied sever all times during the growing season. High cost due to frequent applications of fungicide and the desired to reduce pesticide levels in the environment have motivated considerable efforts to develop disease prediction or warning systems. Agro meteorological variables i.e. Air Temperature, Air Humidity and Leaf Wetness Duration(LWD) are known to be the parameters, which strongly influence the disease development. The WSN system deployed consisted of battery- powered nodes equipped with sensors used for continuously monitoring the agricultural and weather parameters, served as input of the models.

Keywords: Powdery Mildew, Tomato, Leaf Wetness Duration, Wireless Sensor Network