International Congress and Workshop on Agricultural Structures and Irrigation, Diyarbakır, Türkiye, 12 - 15 Mayıs 2022, ss.180
Reliable results are obtained as a result of field applications of water constraint studies.
However, it is not possible to conduct relevant studies in changing climatic conditions for each
plant and growing medium due to time and labor requirements. From this point of view, water
constraint studies conducted in controlled environments have gained importance. Accordingly,
the water content at the Field Capacity (FC) of the growing medium was accepted as 100%, and
the water content at the Fading Point (FP) was accepted as 0%. In order to determine the amount
of water to be added depending on the irrigation time, it is essential to determine the amount lost
by evapotranspiration by weighing the pots. During the movement of the pots for weighing
processes, the masses they contain may change or the plants may be damaged. In order to solve
this problem, it is desired to develop a weighing system that can stay under the pots continuously
and instantly monitor the amount of water lost by evapotranspiration. Within the scope of the
study, Arduino UNO (Arduino LLC., Italy) was chosen as the microprocessor unit and a resistive
based weighing module with a capacity of 100 kg was added. Then, a touchscreen was added to
control the system interface and FC - FP weights of the pot could be saved through this interface.
Thus, it is possible to monitor the change in pot weight proportionally and to see the amount of
water that should be added according to the constraint rate. In addition, thanks to the clock and
memory card modules integrated into the system, it is possible to record the weight change in the
pot over time. In this way, error detection and verification of analyzes were facilitated during the
processing of the data obtained as a result of the study.