Groundwater Quality Assessment of some Poultry Farms in Osun State, Southwestern Nigeria, for Irrigation and Household Uses (Published)
The development of enormous irrigation systems has been a major instrumental to worldwide food security, especially in arid zones, but it has also been associated with land and water salinity issues. The shallow hand-dug wells of some poultry farms in Osun State were sampled on seasonal basis and evaluated for their quality and suitableness for agricultural uses. Twenty-four water samples taken from wells were evaluated for physicochemical variables, applying standard methods. The main constituents that determine the water quality for irrigation like electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids, sodium adsorption ratio, soluble sodium percentage, residual sodium bicarbonate, magnesium adsorption ratio, Kelly’s ratio and Permeability index were evaluated and in comparison with safe limits. Quality assurance procedures included blank test, recovery analysis and calibration of standards. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for data interpretations. The mean values of EC (<600.00 µS/cm), TDS (<400.00 mg/L), SAR (˂1.00 meq/L), SSP (˂25.00%), RSBC (˂0.50 meq/L), MAR (˂ 50.00%), KR (˂0.50 meq/L) and PI (˂2.00 meq/L) were found to be in the safe limits of the National Environmental Standards and Regulations Enforcement Agency and Food and Agricultural Organization/World Health Organization. Thereby, the groundwater would not cause detrimental effects on the soil properties of the assessment area.
Keywords: : Irrigation, Assessment, Groundwater, Water Quality, physicochemical variables, poultry farms
Automation of Irrigation Systems and Design of Automated Irrigation Systems (Published)
Canada is a world leader in the production of many agricultural crops, especially wheat and other cereal grains and irrigation necessary to compensate for insufficient precipitation during the critical portions of the growing season in order to avoid a decrease in productivity. Current irrigation systems are unable to determine when the crops have received sufficient water during and even after irrigation, are not easy to use, require user input, manual connection to the water supply and some level of technical expertise before they can be used successfully, and they are not automated. This paper presents a novel automated irrigation system that does not have any of these limitations. The automated irrigation system works by continuously monitoring the soil moisture content and wirelessly activating the pipeline valves to open when the moisture level drops below the minimum threshold for the cultivated crop, causing the land to be irrigated. When the moisture level rises above the maximum threshold, the system deactivates the irrigation pipeline valves, causing them to close and ceasing land irrigation. This automated irrigation system is customizable and can also be used to upgrade existing drip irrigation systems, surface irrigation systems, and sprinkler irrigation systems to overcome their existing limitations.
Keywords: : Irrigation, automated irrigation system, crop moisture requirement