International Journal of Computer Applications (0975 – 8887) Volume 87 – No.4, February 2014 1 Monitoring and Detection of Agricultural Disease using Wireless Sensor Network Sarika Datir K.J.College of Engineering and Management Research ,Pune(University of Pune) Sanjeev Wagh, Ph.D K.J.College of Engineering and Management Research ,Pune(University of Pune) ABSTRACT Crop production quality and quantity can be enhanced using precision agriculture. One of the major products in India is grape. Major threats for grape farming are downy mildew and meal bug which spreads instantly and are hard to control. As the grape is very costly, Farmer needs to be very careful from the initial stage to harvesting to avoid infection of fungal disease and pest. To prevent disease farmer has to apply fungicides and pesticides in huge quantity, it results in increased cost of production. Also another disadvantage is that grapes may carry toxins. To reduce cost of production and enhance the quality and quantity of the grapes, it is important to propose some mechanism that will help the farmer to detect the disease in early stage. Existing systems for forecasting the disease mostly depends on image processing technologies. Drawback of the existing system is that they wait till symptoms appear and then only the disease can be detected. That’s why such type of systems is unable to help treating the disease at an early stage. Grape diseases like downy mildew is mostly dependent upon weather based parameter like humidity, temperature and wind speed. When any favorable weather condition occurs zoospores in downy start generating spores that enters into the leaves of grape via stomata of the leaves. If favorable weather condition and the probability of disease is detected then it it very helpful for farmers to prevent infection of disease and reduce the cost of production. Keywords Wireless sensor network, GPRS, Downy Mildew, Disease, Pest, Vineyard, Pesticides, fungicides, Agriculture, grapes. 1. INTRODUCTION In 2012 Around 36,888 tons grape was exported from India. Out of total export from the country, 99% export was from Maharashtra while Andhra Pradesh exported 197 tons. Nasik contributes around 70% of Maharashtra's total grape export. Europa Gap is a farm management standard created in 1990s by European supermarket chains and their suppliers. The primary aim of the standard was to bring conformity to different retailers' supplier standards, which had been creating problems for farmers. It is now the world's most widely implemented farm certification scheme. Now a day European customers for agricultural products demand evidence of EurepGAP certification as a prerequisite for doing business. To increase export further farmer needs to be aware of standard required for export like UREPGAP. Many farmer those are doing grape farming are don’t have that much literate hence they cannot understand and satisfy the rules and regulations of UREPGAP related to the application of pesticides and fungicides. Due to that their grapes rejected in residue analysis test and they cannot get more return on investment. Hence farmer needs special methods to apply inputs based only on requirements, instead of prevention. Grapenet is web based software used to trace and track the grape export from India. By using grapenet system, EU registered around 18,007 plots from above mentioned states which cultivate export quality grapes. The major threats to grape farming are powdery mildew, Downy mildew and mealy bug. Powdery mildew can be identified by visualizing white powdery like spots on stems, leaves and the cluster. It spreads in dry as well as wet conditions. Downy mildew shows yellow to brownish spot on the leaves. Downy is very hazardous, once spread difficult to control it. It used for damages the grape yard in a short period of time. The agrisense system developed in [6] detects downy mildew by collecting weather information and applying semi empirical model which provides the probability of downy mildew infection. Another system has implemented sensor [5] for detection of downy mildew based on image processing system. Italy and Spain also contributes for detection and analysis of downy mildew disease using weather information. Methods used for controlling and preventing the pest and diseases in the vineyard include application of chemical like pesticides, fungicides and fertilizer. As there is no mechanism to identify the need of spraying chemicals, It’s hard for farmers to decide whether to spray the chemical or not. As prevention is better than cure farmers apply spray chemicals in high quantity. Chemicals greatly contribute in polluting Soil hence result in wastage of natural resources. Now a day’s many companies provide a weather service that helps to find the probability of disease but weather data provided by them is not located. Also it is important to detect any pests and diseases at its primitive stage in order to avoid overdose of chemicals on grapes. 2. STUDY WNY MILDEW PEST Downy mildew is a fungal disease that appears in the vine yard rose garden and many other fruits and flower. Initial symptoms of disease appear green to brownish yellow spots on the upper side of leaves. Downy spores attached to the lower side of the leaves. When spores died on the lower side that the yellow spots gets appear on the upper side. The downy mildew disease developed in three stages. a) Pre- Penetration phase) Penetration phase c) Post- Penetration phase. As shown in Fig. 1 primary infection of downy mildew mildew starts from a fungus that overwinters as spores inside fallen leaves. When humidity increases oospores produces sporangium, sporangium produces zoospores, zoospores produces aspersorium that is called as an organ of attachment. In penetration phase aspersorium apply mechanical pressure on leaves and produces some enzymes and toxins and get entry into the internal part of the leaves. In post penetration