New technology is seeking to revolutionise the way local farmers do their business. At the National Electronics and Computer Technology Centre (Nectec), computer and electronics technologies are being developed to improve agriculture systems to allow Thai farmers to better manage their farms and also increase yields.

Under the guidance of Nectec's agritronics project, work is under way to combine computers, electronics

and embedded systems for use in agriculture, said researcher Rachaporn Keinprasit.

The electronic system will help farmers monitor such things as temperature, light, atmosphere, humidity and soil quality on their farms automatically, so they can keep track of the overall status of their operations for further reference.

The project is to be run for four years, until 2009.

Rachaporn said the centre's team has already developed a monitoring unit, which comes with sensors to measure temperature, humidity, light and soil quality.

The built-in GSM SIM card records data and sends information wirelessly to the centre's computer system so farmers can access it.

The centre will be tested on a tea plantation at Mae Fah Luang University and on a sugar cane farm at Kasetsart University's Kampangsan campus.

The monitoring system was put in place at Mae Fah Luang in May and Rachaporn said it would play a key role in helping the university's researchers keep track of the tea plants' progress.

The system is yet to be installed at Kasetsart University's sugar cane farm, but researchers there are expected to use it to similarly monitor plant growth.

Currently, the system can only be used at a single location, but Rachaporn said the centre plans to further develop the system to become what he called a "wireless sensor network".

The new version, he said, would allow farmers to place sensors at several points on their land and monitor plant status over a wider area.

Information gathered by the sensors would then be sent wirelessly to the central node before being forwarded via a cellular network to the computer server.

The new system is in its initial stages of development and is expected to be in use by the end of the year.

But what farmers are really looking forward to is an automatic control system linked to a monitoring system. This combination, Rachaporn said, would have the ability to actually manage plant watering.

The timing and amount of water to be used, depending on atmospheric conditions, would be automatically calculated by the system, so when it's time to water, the system could take charge automatically. Work on this project is expected to begin next year.

To make the smart agriculture system more efficient, the centre will have to integrate computer technology with agricultural knowledge.

In that way, the system, once it knows the overall condition of the crop, can make further analyses for itself and also predict what may happen to the farm and the crops in advance.

"When technology is integrated with agriculture, it helps farmers plan better and make the best use of available resources.

"Most importantly, it increases productivity and the quality of the product," Rachaporn said.

Pongpen Sutharoj

The Nation