Coastal land has great potential to be developed as an agricultural area. Utilization has now been done, one of them in the southern coast of Yogyakarta. However, the problem of inefficient irrigation and physiological damage of plants due to salinity levels carried by the sea breeze is still a major obstacle in the development of agriculture in coastal sand.
Departing from these problems, five students of Department of Agricultural Engineering FTP UGM were encouraged to create a tool to overcome this. They are Mohammad Taufik Hidayatullah, Dwi Noor Rohmah, Haryo Prastono, Utik Tri Wulan Cahya, and Shofwatul Fadilah who created a micro-controller based automatic control system on drip irrigation system combined with salt washing system on the leaves of agricultural crops in the sand beach named ISIS (Integrated Irrigation System).
The ISIS (Integrated Irrigation System) control system works by automatically draining the irrigation water when the plants need water through a point-of-point approach (TL) and stop when the soil reaches the capacity to hold water (Field Capacity) through the sensor reading of moisture content. This control system will also activate the automatic sprinkler automatically to wash the leaves when the salt content in the air reaches the maximum limit that can leaf physiologically leaf through the reading of the air salt sensors.
“The application of this tool is intended to meet the needs of plants in accordance with precision irrigation scheduling and plants that grow can develop more optimally with salt washing on the leaf surface,” said Chairman of the ISIS development team, Mohammad Taufik on Wednesday (17/6) on campus FTP UGM.
The ISIS control system, he said, is expected to maintain the soil in the state of Available Moisture (AM) ie where the water is in a state available for plant growth. In addition, ISIS is also able to save water usage because there is no surface flow or location. The hope with this irrigation system can improve agricultural productivity by minimizing the occurrence of growth disturbance due to excess or lack of water during the irrigation and physiological disturbance of tanman due to salt disturbance carried by sea breeze.
“The making of this tool is also a form of soil and water conservation efforts that impact on environmental sustainability,” he said (Ilyas)