Readily available moisture in the root zone is very important for optimum plant growth. The avail... more Readily available moisture in the root zone is very important for optimum plant growth. The available techniques to determine soil moisture content have practical limitations owing to their high cost, dependence on labor, and time consumption. We have developed a prototype for automated soil moisture monitoring using a low-cost capacitive soil moisture sensor (SKU:SEN0193) for data acquisition, connected to the internet. A soil-specific calibration was performed to integrate the sensor with the automated soil moisture monitoring system. The accuracy of the soil moisture measurements was compared with those of a gravimetric method and a well-established soil moisture sensor (SM-200, Delta-T Devices Ltd, Cambridge, UK). The root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the soil water contents obtained with the SKU:SEN0193 sensor function, the SM-200 manufacturer’s function, and the SM-200 soil-specific calibration function were 0.09, 0.07, and 0.06 cm3 cm−3, for samples in the dry to saturated ran...
Non repayment of Agricultural credit has become a serious problem to banks. The present study was... more Non repayment of Agricultural credit has become a serious problem to banks. The present study was undertaken to understand the profile and repayment behavior of farmers in Dambulla area by using 60 numbers of randomly selected farmers in 5 garama niladari divisions under Dambulla divisional secretariat. The results of factor analysis categorized main 4 factors: micro finance related behavioral factor, banks regulations and uncontrollable impacts, credit misuse factors and income related factors. Binary logistic regression revealed that there was a significant relationship between repayments of credit with age, low land cultivation and life insurance premiums as well as micro finance related behavioral factors and credit misuse factors. The study concluded that farmers should be given proper knowledge about the management of credit and the importance of maintaining good cash flow to increase the credit repayment ability.
Systems that are made of several low-cost gas sensors with automatic gas sampling may have the po... more Systems that are made of several low-cost gas sensors with automatic gas sampling may have the potential to serve as reliable fast methane analyzers. However, there is a lack of reports about such types of systems evaluated under field conditions. Here, we developed a continuous methane monitoring system with automated gas sampling unit using low-cost gas sensors, TGS 2611 and MQ-4, that use a simple cloud-based data acquisition platform. We verified the consistency, repeatability, and reproducibility of the data obtained by TGS 2611 and MQ-4 low-cost gas sensors by measuring high- and low-concentration methane samples. The normalized root-mean-square errors (NRMSEs) of the samples with high methane concentrations, [CH4] of 3, 4, 6, and 7%, were 0.0788, 0.0696, 0.1198, and 0.0719 for the TGS 2611 sensor, respectively, and were confirmed using a gas chromatograph as a reference analyzer. The NRMSEs of the samples with low [CH4] of 0.096, 0.145, 0.193, and 0.241% measured by the TGS 2...
Readily available moisture in the root zone is very important for optimum plant growth. The avail... more Readily available moisture in the root zone is very important for optimum plant growth. The available techniques to determine soil moisture content have practical limitations owing to their high cost, dependence on labor, and time consumption. We have developed a prototype for automated soil moisture monitoring using a low-cost capacitive soil moisture sensor (SKU:SEN0193) for data acquisition, connected to the internet. A soil-specific calibration was performed to integrate the sensor with the automated soil moisture monitoring system. The accuracy of the soil moisture measurements was compared with those of a gravimetric method and a well-established soil moisture sensor (SM-200, Delta-T Devices Ltd, Cambridge, UK). The root-mean-square error (RMSE) of the soil water contents obtained with the SKU:SEN0193 sensor function, the SM-200 manufacturer’s function, and the SM-200 soil-specific calibration function were 0.09, 0.07, and 0.06 cm3 cm−3, for samples in the dry to saturated ran...
Non repayment of Agricultural credit has become a serious problem to banks. The present study was... more Non repayment of Agricultural credit has become a serious problem to banks. The present study was undertaken to understand the profile and repayment behavior of farmers in Dambulla area by using 60 numbers of randomly selected farmers in 5 garama niladari divisions under Dambulla divisional secretariat. The results of factor analysis categorized main 4 factors: micro finance related behavioral factor, banks regulations and uncontrollable impacts, credit misuse factors and income related factors. Binary logistic regression revealed that there was a significant relationship between repayments of credit with age, low land cultivation and life insurance premiums as well as micro finance related behavioral factors and credit misuse factors. The study concluded that farmers should be given proper knowledge about the management of credit and the importance of maintaining good cash flow to increase the credit repayment ability.
Systems that are made of several low-cost gas sensors with automatic gas sampling may have the po... more Systems that are made of several low-cost gas sensors with automatic gas sampling may have the potential to serve as reliable fast methane analyzers. However, there is a lack of reports about such types of systems evaluated under field conditions. Here, we developed a continuous methane monitoring system with automated gas sampling unit using low-cost gas sensors, TGS 2611 and MQ-4, that use a simple cloud-based data acquisition platform. We verified the consistency, repeatability, and reproducibility of the data obtained by TGS 2611 and MQ-4 low-cost gas sensors by measuring high- and low-concentration methane samples. The normalized root-mean-square errors (NRMSEs) of the samples with high methane concentrations, [CH4] of 3, 4, 6, and 7%, were 0.0788, 0.0696, 0.1198, and 0.0719 for the TGS 2611 sensor, respectively, and were confirmed using a gas chromatograph as a reference analyzer. The NRMSEs of the samples with low [CH4] of 0.096, 0.145, 0.193, and 0.241% measured by the TGS 2...
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Papers by Isura Nagahage