Ecofert: An Android application for the optimization of fertilizer cost in fertigation

doi:10.1016/j.compag.2015.11.006

Computers and Electronics in Agriculture

Volume 121, February 2016, Pages 32-42

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compag.2015.11.006 Get rights and content

Highlights

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An application for mobile devices is presented, compatible with almost all versions of Android O.S.
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It calculates the best combination of fertilizers for fertigation, minimizing fertilizers cost.
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The Simplex algorithm is used to solve the problem, due to its low computational cost.
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It uses a list of commercial fertilizers hosted in a DDBB in the Cloud updated daily.
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A local DDBB permits to store and manage calculations, and to send them by e-mail.

Abstract

In the agriculture sector, the efficient management of fertilizers is reflected into a saving of money and time. Many software developments are found in the scientific literature and in the market that optimize the performance and use of fertilizers for specific crops. Most of them do not take into account the current price of fertilizers; and others show a high computational cost, which means high time to solve scenarios with medium–high number of fertilizers to select and high power consumption, being not suitable for mobile devices. In this work Ecofert is presented as a simple and powerful software application developed for Android O.S. that calculates the best combination of fertilizers to obtain the desired nutrient solution for different crops, taking into account the current price of fertilizers in the market. The main novelties of Ecofert is, on the one hand, that it solves the fertilization selection by modeling this as a Linear Programming problem, and using specific mathematical libraries to solve it. On the other hand, Ecofert works with a list of commercial fertilizers hosted in a Data Base in the Cloud, where the composition and price (in Euro) is updated daily. Moreover Ecofert shows a low computational cost, even for large number of fertilizers (>20). Its simplicity permits Ecofert to be executed in mobile devices, giving farmers and agriculture technicians a powerful tool to support agricultural tasks in situ.

Introduction

The increase in world population is a constant challenge in the agriculture sector, due to the need of generating more food, both in quantity and quality. The needs of resource optimization for increased agricultural production have led companies in the sector to innovate in seeds, pesticides, irrigation and fertilizers. Currently the latter are key in the agricultural production, because the price of their essential raw materials have suffered a significant increase, and it is expected that this trend continues the next few years (FAO, 2012). This tendency will also affect to the final price of the agricultural production. Hence, an efficient management of fertilizers will be reflected into a saving of money and time, that is, a more profitable production.

There are many software developments in the market, designed to make easier the farmer’s tasks (Molina-Martínez and Ruiz-Canales, 2009, Molina-Martinez et al., 2011, Rehman et al., 2014, Bueno-Delgado et al., 2014, Hopkins, 2014), being the software applications for mobile devices (aka app) the most prominent in the recent years (Hopkins, 2014). Some of tools are focused on the management and optimization of the use of fertilizers in soil and/or hydroponic crops (NPK, 2015, MITRA, 2015, CropFertilizers, 2015, SSCA, 2014, Fertcalc, 2012). But only a few offer the possibility to calculate the optimal fertilizer selection to reach the optimal nutritional needs, computing the total fertilizer costs (Smart-fertilizer, 2012, Fertilizer Cost Calculator, xxxx, FCC, 2012, UFO, 2012, Agro Services International Inc, xxxx, FBC, xxxx, DSS-FS, 2015). All of them have been studied in depth in Section 2, in order to point out that, as the authors’ point of view, these do not show the options, novel mathematical procedures and low computational cost offered by Ecofert. Moreover, most do not calculate the fertilizer selection to minimize the total fertilizer cost.

This work shows EcoFert, a software application for Android O.S. that provides farmers and agricultural technicians a simple and powerful tool to calculate the optimal combination of fertilizers to obtain the desired nutrient solution for different crops using proportional fertigation. It answers the questions about what fertilizers and what quantities of them should be added to the fertilizer tanks of an irrigation system in order to reach the ideal solution, minimizing the total fertilizer cost. Ecofert works in three steps. First, Ecofert addresses the calculations about which nutrients must be added to the water irrigation in order to reach the ideal nutrient solution (Moreira-Barradas et al., 2012). To do this, Ecofert uses the universal method propose by Steiner (1961), that needs some input parameters: the composition of the water used for irrigation, and the ideal nutrient solution of the crop of interest. In the second step, Ecofert uses the output of the previous point, together with a set of fertilizers selected by the user. These are available in a Data Base in the Cloud. Every fertilizer indicates its composition and price in Euros. In the third step, Ecofert executes a novel mathematical algorithm that calculates which of those fertilizers selected in the previous step, and what amount of them, are needed to cover the nutrient needs, minimizing the total fertilizer cost. After that Ecofert permits to calculate the exact amount of kg or L of each fertilizer obtained, the user hast to add to the tanks of an irrigation system. The user can configure the number of tanks as well as the parameters related to the irrigation system.

Ecofert shows many features that make it unique for crop production:

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It is developed for Android O.S., which is the most prominent, free stable and extended O.S. in the market, implemented in the majority of mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) in the market: HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, etc.
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It has been developed using current trends in mobile applications, including an adaptive design in the screen elements to be executed in tablets and all types of smartphones.
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It solves the fertilization selection by modeling the fertilization selection problem as a Linear Programming (LP) problem (Luenberger and Ye, 2008), and using the Simplex algorithm (Maros, 2003), which is the most efficient algorithm for solving LP problems.
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It uses the specific library Apache Commons Maths 3 simplex solver (Apache, 2015), giving low computational cost even for a large number of fertilizers (>20).
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It uses a list of commercial fertilizers hosted in a Data Base (DB) in the Cloud. For each fertilizer, its composition and price in the market (in kg €⁻¹ or L €⁻¹) is shown. The DB is updated daily, adding or removing fertilizers according to the changes in the fertilizers market. The user selects from that list a set of them (or even all of them), which will be used to compute the algorithm.
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It has a local DB to store and manage the data of previous calculations. It offers the possibility to send these data by e-mail.

Ecofert is a software tool closer to the reality of farmers and technicians, currently using the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to support and make easier agricultural tasks in situ, e.g. by using mobile devices to execute specific applications for farm duties.

The rest of the paper is organized as follows: in Section 2 the related work is presented. Section 3 reviews the fertigation technique, as well as the general method to obtain the nutritional needs for a specific crop. Section 4 describes the previous considerations to take into account in the fertilization selection. Section 5 explains the Optimization Problem that Ecofert solves. Section 6 addresses the Ecofert software description. Finally, Section 7 summarizes the conclusions.

Section snippets

Related work

There are many software developments in the market, designed to make easier the farmer’s tasks. However, only a few are designed to specifically manage and optimize the performance and use of fertilizers in crops. They can be classified according to different features: type of crop, type of operative system supported, technique used to compute the fertilization selection, etc. In this work this software tools have been classified according to their kind of access and installation: apps for

Fertigation: from the ideal solution to the nutritional needs

Fertigation is a technique that allows simultaneous application of water and fertilizers through the irrigation system. It requires basic knowledge about the ideal nutritional solution of crops and the water used (pH, electrical conductivity (EC)). Nowadays fertigation is the most rational method available for optimized fertilization.

There are two methods of fertigation: Quantitative and proportional. Quantitative fertigation is based on calculating the nutritional needs taking into account

Fertilizers selection: previous considerations

Once the nutritional needs are calculated, Ecofert must decide those fertilizers that, not only cover the nutritional needs, but also optimize the hydroponic crop production, minimizing the total fertilizer cost. To do this Ecofert must consider some data and constraints:

Fertilizers selection: a linear optimization problem

The problem of deciding what fertilizers to consider for a specific crop in order to minimize fertilizers cost and taking into account the previous constraints satisfies the conditions needed to model this problem as a LP Problem (Luenberger and Ye, 2008), using the Simplex method (Maros, 2003). Simplex method is an iterative algorithm designed to solve big LP problems efficiently, and guaranties that, if an optimal solution exists, is found in a finite number of iterations. The Simplex

Ecofert

Ecofert has been developed as a friendly and easy to use mobile app that provides farmers and technicians the possibility to calculate with a mobile device the best combination of fertilizers to obtain the desired nutrient solution for a specific crop, saving time and money. The calculations are performed by the app automatically and transparently to the user. The application performs the calculations to answer to the questions about what fertilizers and what quantities of them must be added to

Validation

In order to validate Ecofert, the same example performed by Pagán et al. (2014) with Optifer tool is also computed with Ecofert. The scenario was a cherry tomato greenhouse in full production located in Maneadero, Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico. The composition of water irrigation, the ideal nutritional solution and the final necessary inputs are summarized in Table 4.

The necessary inputs are summarized as 13.5 N, 2P, 5 K, 2Ca, 1.4 Mg, and pH 5.5. Ten fertilizers were selected to cover the

Conclusions

In this paper Ecofert is presented as a mobile application for Android O.S. that offers farmers and agricultural technicians an easy and powerful tool to decide the set of fertilizers needed in their crops, under proportional fertigation technique. Ecofert uses a mathematical technique to solve the optimal solution, that minimizes the total fertilizers cost, maximizing the nutritional requirements and fulfilling the fertilizer requirements and constraints. To do this, the problem is modeled as

Acknowledgements

Thanks to the anonymous reviewers for their value comments and suggestions to improve the quality of the paper and to Telenatura E.B.T. for its technical support. This work was supported by the research project 3639/13TIC and the research project 3703/13TIC.

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According to the World Bank, as of mid-2000s, more people have access to mobile technologies than clean water. Mobile technologies were quickly recognized as excellent high performing work tools and became adapted early on for use in the agricultural sector. They offer exciting opportunities for improving farming practices, including operating sustainable fertilizer management strategies and related extension support. From assessing potential Nitrogen losses in California to fine-tuning fertilizer recommendations in Thailand — harnessing the potential of mobile technologies was recognized as an essential piece in the worldwide move towards information-driven, efficient, and sustainable agriculture. In this review, mobile technologies designed to augment existing methods of fertilizer management were reviewed and challenges to their adoption together with missing links in their development process were emphasised.
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Many factors come into play in determining the type and quantity of fertilizer needed to produce satisfactory and environmentally safe fertigation programs. There are abundant fertigation simulators and applications in the literature for managing the use of fertilizers in soil and soilless crops (Moreira et al., 2012; Pérez-Castro et al. (2017)), but few of them provide the possibility of calculating the optimal combination of fertilizers to reach the nutritional needs at a minimum cost (Bueno-Delgado et al., 2016). Herein, we used a two-step simulation model (Fig. 3) that calculates the optimal combination of fertilizers to obtain a nutrient solution which satisfies the nutritional requirements of each crop at the cheapest rate.
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Application noteEcofert: An Android application for the optimization of fertilizer cost in fertigation