Advancing precision irrigation through an affordable IoT-enabled lysimeter for monitoring crop water requirements

Abstract

Lysimeters are essential for quantifying soil water content and evapotranspiration, but their high cost limits widespread adoption. This study developed a cost effective, IoT-enabled weighing lysimeter to measure crop evapotranspiration (ET c ) in shallow-rooted crops and enhance sustainable irrigation management. The system, with a 1.38 m² surface area and a one-ton single-point load cell, integrated soil moisture and temperature sensors at three depths and a waterproof ultrasonic sensor for drainage measurement. Data were stored locally on an SD card and transmitted to the cloud via the ThingSpeak IoT platform for real-time monitoring. Field validation with wheat during the 2022-23 winter season recorded a total ET c of 331.9 mm with high accuracy ( R ² = 0.998) and a resolution of 0.20 mm. The total cost of construction was approximately USD 709, making it a highly cost-effective and practical alternative to conventional lysimeter systems. The developed system enables affordable, accurate, and continuous water monitoring, supporting efficient irrigation scheduling and sustainable water resource management.

Plant phenotyping relevance

作物蒸発散量を連続測定するIoT対応ライシメータを開発し、圃場で精度検証しており、植物の水利用状態の取得方法が研究の中心である。

Code and data availability

The paper describes an IoT-enabled weighing lysimeter with data stored on an SD card and transmitted to ThingSpeak, but the referenced ThingSpeak channel is explicitly private, and no public dataset, code repository, or supplement containing the paper's ETc measurements or analysis is identified. Other URLs are vendor/

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.