Web based agricultural irrigation scheduling system for Batticaloa district

Abstract

Agrarian Services Centre (ASC) is one of the Government organizations which is located in the Vantharumoolai, Batticaloa district. ASC plays an important role in maintaining sustainability of agriculture by ensuring the cultivation in the cultivatable land according to the acts of agricultural ministry, helping farmers in irrigation water management, guiding the cultivation program according to the annual cultivation schedule and to helping farmers in obtaining loans from rural banks for agricultural production. In Agrarian Services Centre in Vantharumoolai, they do not have any meteorology related system to help the farmers who are cultivating the crops in Batticaloa District. Due to this reason farmers were facing several problems related to their cultivation or agronomic practices (especially during irrigation) throughout their cultivation period. Thus farmers cannot get high yield at the end of their cultivation in Batticaloa district. Therefore this web based system (Agro Meteorological Indicator) will provide daily and monthly updated meteorological information such as Air Temperature, Relative Humidity, Rainfall pattern, Evaporation rate, Crop water requirement and Irrigation Schedule. Unified Modelling Language (UML) was used for analysis and design. Hypertext Pre-processor (PHP) which is a server-side scripting language was used to build the system and Apache has been used as the web server, meanwhile MySQL was used to handle databases. Since this is a web based system, it could be operated in Windows environment. The web based Agro Meteorological Indicator was designed to fulfil the user and system requirements. The system will help to farmers can do their agronomic practices according to the information provided by this system. Therefore farmers can get high yield and high agricultural productivity. It could also help the ASC administration to work efficiently.