BENGALURU: When a final year BTech student from CMRIT intended on starting a business, it was more to help farmers than make some moolah.
Antony Michael Jenitter’s start-up provides automated products for irrigation. His start up, Irrigatronics focuses on the development of automated irrigation systems for both rural and urban ventures.
He was inspired to create such a system after visiting his hometown Tirunelveli and coming across the problem of irregular distribution of water for crops, over usage and wastage as well. This prompted him to create devices specialised in intelligent monitoring of gardens and even agricultural fields. His devices come in different sizes depending on the land under consideration.
Currently, he has developed two different machines to suit needs of households as well as commercial business which include hotels, hospitals and universities.
Automated System
“The automatic irrigation system works with the help of soil moisture tension sensors. These sensors measure water content in the soil and automatically irrigate the land depending on the readings,” says the 20-year-old.
A tab with a microcontroller and a preinstalled app monitoring the water levels, using different colors, comes along with the device, he adds.
Once a client approaches Antony, his team goes and gets samples of the soil, measures the moisture levels and identifies the crop and plant types. “Depending on these parameters adequate number of low power water pumps, sprinklers and soil moisture tension sensors are placed across gardens, lawns and fields,” says the entrepreneur.
Using this device one can easily control irrigation without having to visit the land at all. For households, the device comes in a smaller size for each individual pot or plants, he says.
Prevents Water Wastage
According to Antony, his technology reduces manpower required for watering purposing, thus being cost effective. “It also prevents wastage of water, as normally most people end up providing more than required amount of water for plants causing saturation of water in soil. Sensors cut off the water supply when the soil attains a sufficient moisture level,” he says.
He explains that only those areas with green patches are watered by the system. The devices come pre-programed by Antony and his team to suit different types of lands.
The project to develop this began as a team work, comprising Antony and four other members, who are seniors from his college. Currently these automatic irrigation products have also been developed for household purposes such as for terrace gardening and vegetable gardens.
“This system will save up to 80% of water if used. Conventional methods cause a lot of water that is lost due to slippage and spillage,” says Antony. The college student informs that a similar product has been designed in the United States by IrriGreen, to water yards and lawns according to their shapes and sizes and to conserve water up to 50 per cent.
Antony believes that the development of this automated system in India could benefit farmers immensely and also if employed on green barriers on roads it would greatly contribute to development of greenery and subsequent reduction in pollution in the city. He hopes that soon farmers would also start opting for this system to irrigate their lands.