Wireless Sensor Networks for Microclimate Monitoring in Edamame Farm

Climate change due to global warming is posing formidable challenge to the agriculture sector for food production in meeting the rising food demand. Agriculture intensification and land clearing are growing rapidly despite of the fact that cultivable land is limited. It is therefore imperative for the farmers to emphasize on a sustainable way of increasing the crop yield as opposed to clearing more lands. Weather station is one of the modern helpful tools which can be employed to gather essential meteorological information that facilitates farmers to maximize their crop production. In this work, portable, wireless-based weather stations are designed and installed in an edamame farm to study the influence of microclimate on the crop yield. The results demonstrate that field parameters such as air temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and precipitation greatly influence the crop yield and that these variables closely correlate to each other. Furthermore, it was shown that the weather parameter data can be a useful tool not only for monitoring the farm efficiently, but also for predicting future crop yield.