Automated Hydroponic systems can save the world one day in near future

People say “Organic” but have high demand with busy routines. People say “protect arable and reduce Carbon emission” but the empty stomach of increasing population feels hunger more than saving the world. With the industrial revolution human beings became super tiring and left with no time for traditional farming techniques. After the Green revolution, the demand for food for the multiplying world population was covered up to a satisfactory level. However the word “eco- friendly” died out. The present world searches for solutions for all these arisen issues regarding agriculture such as quality and quantity of foods, protecting arable lands and reducing labor hours to make food. As a solution, automated Hydroponics Farming systems can be improved anywhere in the world which mitigate the majority of issues.

Hydroponic is a technique where the crops are grown in absence of soil. The nutrients acquired from the soil are given to them precisely. The term Hydroponics was developed from the Greek word “Hydro” means water and “Ponos” means work or labour. There are divergent types of Hydroponics systems (wick system, drip system, nutrient film technique (NFT), deep flow technique, and aeroponic system etc.) that use according to the situation and the necessity. This is an unequaled method to grow fresh vegetables year-round. And a great alternative for cultivating a variety of plants in smaller spaces, such as green houses, indoors, rooftops, multi- tiered buildings and to mitigate the over usage of chemicals on pest and disease controlling. Correspondingly, all required elements (such as temperature, humidity, pH level, light, nutrients and water) that impact vigorous plant growth can be effortlessly maintained. The capability to rheostat these elements makes hydroponic farming easier and less time consuming than cultivating in soil.

Contemporary world always has less time on maintenance of hydroponics systems manually and giving fertilization and watering at exact intervals. Apart from that, the manual processes consume more time and labour while providing less harvest compared to precise automated farming. Therefore, it has developed automated hydroponic systems that match the smart lifestyle of the modern world with a combination of sensors, internet and real time cloud databases. Through these systems it has facilitated the monitoring and control of the hydroponic environment with the integration of IoT (Internet of Things) which plays a vital role in the automation process. While sensors and actuators retrieve the data of crucial parameters from hydroponic water tank and crop, a cloud database which collects and contains all the information acts as the hub for the whole automation procedure. These sensors identify temperature, humidity, light intensity, pH level, nutrition levels, electrical conductivity, and Oxygen levels in the water. The problems regarding health conditions of plants due to the changes in nutrient tanks can be controlled by letting more nutrients to the crop bed and the differences in the plants can be captured via captured images which are uploaded to the cloud database. The irrigation, fertigation, temperature controlling, RH controlling, Lighting and other essential practices can control remotely with the real time data and can create accurate schedules to manage those automatically. These systems are developed and installed by Agro-tech companies like ELZIAN AGRO and super-efficient mobile applications have also been developed which can be used for small scale farmers and home gardeners too. Henceforth, cultivating in urban areas with hectic jobs and going with organic products would not be a dream any longer.