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Professor Dr. Şerafettin Aşık, Lecturer of Ege University (EÜ) Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Structures and Irrigation, announced that a huge saving is achieved with the use of artificial intelligence methods in agricultural irrigation and reported that in their project study, 80 percent savings were achieved in irrigation with this method.
While water resources are gradually decreasing in the world, the water used in agriculture accounts for more than 70 percent of total water use, Dr. Aşık unveiled that digitalisation and the use of artificial intelligence in agriculture play a major role in the effective use of water. Dr. Aşık stated that a huge saving emerged in their study on the use of artificial intelligence in agricultural irrigation.
“WE NEED TO TAKE THE PRODUCER’S HAND OFF THE VALVE”
Highlighting that effective use of water in agriculture is important, Dr. Aşık said, “It is necessary to obtain maximum product with a unit of water. For this, it is also necessary to determine the need of the plant and give water according to the need. In Türkiye, we give plants more water than they need. There is an opinion among the producers that a lot of water provides a lot of yield. This is a complete myth. The plant gets stressed either from thirst or excessive water. The plant should be given as much water as it needs. The most important thing we can do is to use technologies that manage irrigation methods that use water efficiently.”
Emphasizing that the producer switches on the water and leaves and the valve remains open for hours, Dr. Aşık added, “This is not called drip irrigation, but wild drip irrigation. We need to take our producer’s hand off the valve and we can only do this with the latest technologies. Today, we have digital agriculture and artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence manages water instead of the farmer. With SmartCapillarty data, artificial intelligence learns the land, soil and uses that information. It opens and closes the valve whenever it wants. We call this intermittent irrigation. With intermittent irrigation, water travels horizontally and a larger area is irrigated with a unit of water. This can only be done with artificial intelligence, not by human hands.”
