Plantly

Proposal

Agriculture is a thriving sector in New Mexico, with over $3.2 billion in revenue just in 2021 alone, according to a study conducted by the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. With an industry as large as this, many farmers and gardeners utilize precise equipment and measuring devices to aid in determining soil fertility and selecting crops to be grown. These devices can be very costly for the average farmer or gardener, and make it harder to make decisions about soil based on pure judgment. The goal of this project is to aid this by developing affordable devices that help monitor soil from crop selection and fertility analysis, as well as plants throughout their growth and harvest.

The plan for this project is to design and develop two devices: a deterministic device and a monitoring device. The deterministic device will employ an ISE (Ion-selective Electrode) that follows a similar design used by Cattrall et al. This device will make an initial determination of the soil’s fertility and nutrient content, and suggest the use of certain fertilizing agents or crops to grow according to the soil’s analysis. The monitoring device will determine the soil’s nutrient and health levels by conductivity patterns, which will employ various conductive electrodes. The usage of these electrodes collects voltage difference data, which will be fed into a classification model using TensorFlow. All of the data from both devices will be displayed in an easy-to-understand interface, most likely developed using HTML5 or Swift.

Citations

New, J. S. (2023, August 18). Agriculture’s Impact to NM Economy Opportunities for Investment [Review of Agriculture’s Impact to NM Economy Opportunities for Investment]. New Mexico Legislature; New Mexico Department of Agriculture. 

Cattrall, R. W., Tribuzio, S., & Freiser, H. (1974). Potassium ion responsive coated wire electrode based on valinomycin. Analytical chemistry, 46(14), 2223–2226. https://doi.org/10.1021/ac60350a026