DEVELOPMENT OF AN AUTOMATIC METEOROLOGICAL STATION FOR IRRIGATION MANAGEMENT

Abstract

An automatic meteorological station with indigenous technology was developed for irrigation scheduling. The station is composed of five sensors, normally used to calculate hydric balance in which rainfall and ETo are two major computation parameters. The equipment has a display to visualize data of earlier days, memory to store one year data on hourly basis, data communication port to microcomputer via RS-232 protocol, computer software to collect and visualize data and a solar panel for battery charging. The sensor was calibrated according to the recommendation of WMO. The correlation indexes (r) was 1.000, 0.998, 0.999, 0.997 and 1.000, respectively for wind, rain, air humidity, solar radiation and temperature respectively. The equipment attained the objectives of energy self-sufficiency, data manipulation with or without a microcomputer, use simplicity, easy maintenance and high correlation of sensor’s response. It was concluded that the equipment satisfies the technical and operational requirements for use in agriculture. Being a prototype, it is not yet available for immediate substitution of the similar equipments on market, because it requires tests in the national and international accredited meteorology laboratories to certify its correct operation.