INTL JOURNAL OF ELECTRONICS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS, 2019, VOL. 65, NO.3, PP. 353-358 Manuscript received March 19, 2019; revised August, 2019. DOI: 10.24425/ijet.2019.126321 Abstract—Most of the developing countries economy largely depends on the agriculture. More than half of the population rely on agriculture related activities for their survival. In spite of dependency on agriculture, the technological development of agricultural work in developing country is not comparable to the countries like Australia or Israel. The main reason behind the lack of development is the small size of farms. Such farmers cannot afford expensive technology available in the market due to limited profit margins. The report describes an autonomous fertilization system that takes care of the fertilization requirements of the small scale farms at affordable rates. The system is divided in two parts namely User Interface and Control System. The user interface is designed using the state of the art Raspberry Pi board and a touch screen LCD. The control system is developed using the Arduino platform and can control five fertilizers at a time. The output of the system is the mix of the fertilizer, which is forced into the drip irrigation system of the farm. The system has built in data for the fertilization requirement for important crops and vegetation. The system also facilitates the customize fertilization requirements to be added in the system as per the user requirements. Keywords—Fertilization, Automation, Electronics in Agriculture, GUI, Embedded System I. INTRODUCTION HE agriculture dependencies of developing countries demands latest technological developments for the betterment. The small-scale farms or the local farmer can’t afford the advanced automatic tools for farming. The lack of advancement affects the growth of the farming and the people directly or indirectly involved with the same [1]. The latest technological advancement in the electronics and automation equipment makes it possible to develop state of the art automatic farming tools at a lower cost. The expense incurred in the deployment of tools is not the only requirement, but it is also necessary that the tools is easy to use so that the farmer effectively utilize the capabilities of the tool [2, 1]. The amount of water available for the irrigation is a scarcity in modern farming. The drip irrigation is a remedy for the said issue [3]. Most of the countries, farming with the drip irrigation is very popular. The work aims to develop an ad-on system for the existing drip irrigation to make it more appropriate for small scale farming. The main reason behind the lack of development is the small size of farms in developing countries. Such farmers cannot afford expensive technology available in the market due to limited profit margins. Occasionally, the farmers afraid of using the new technology due to lack of confidence in the use of the Authors are with Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Institute of Technology, Nirma University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, same. The idea is to develop a sophisticated automatic fertilization unit, which is a low cost solution of available costly equipment for the same task. This will bring ease of operation in the process of fertilization and low cost will motivate the farmers to use it. The developed system should be compatible with the existing drip irrigation systems of the farm. Moreover, the systems must be easy to use, so that an unlearned farmer can effectively use the same. The specific goals for the Automatic fertilizer system are as follows: • To design an automatic fertilization system for agricultural purpose. • To develop accurate flow control to maintain the exact proportion of fertilizers to be added in the existing drip irrigation system. • To develop a prototype system, which is generated hereby, can further be utilized for designing a larger size, practically implementable system. II. AUTOMATION OF DRIP IRRIGATION SYSTEMS WITH FERTILIZERS Automation of micro/drip irrigation system mentions to operation of the system with no or minimum manual interventions. Irrigation automation is well acceptable where a large area to be irrigated is separated into small sections called irrigation blocks and sections are irrigated in sequence to match the flow or water available from the water source. Today in developing countries preferences towards atomization of drip irrigation with proper fertilization is gaining thrust due to following reasons. • Automation eliminates manual operation of closing or opening the valves, especially in exhaustive irrigation process. • Possibility to optimize the irrigation and fertilization process. • Adoption of advanced crop systems and new technologies, particularly new crops system that are difficult and complex to operate manually. • Use of water from different sources and increased water and fertilizer use efficiency. • System can be functioned at night, thus the daytime can be employed for other agricultural activities. • Pump starts and stops exactly when required, thus improving energy requirements India (e-mail: akash.mecwan@nirmauni.ac.in, jayesh.patel@nirmauni.ac.in, piyush.bhatasana@nirmauni.ac.in). Design and Development of Cost effective Automatic Fertilization System for Small Scale Indian Farm Vijay Savani, Akash Mecwan, Jayesh Patel, and Piyush Bhatasana T