Desenvolvimento de um aplicativo para o manejo de irrigação utilizando a ferramenta “App inventor” na plataforma “Android”

Abstract

The lack of a proper irrigation management by the majority of producers in irrigated public areas in the state of Ceará is considered the main factor with direct influence on productivity, cost of production, quality of products, and especially in the environmental issue, where the inappropriate use of water from our springs could seriously compromise our future generations. The initiative in the development of tools to assist the producer to carry out a satisfactory irrigation management that is accessible and of easy operation is a goal that should always be set as a priority. This work aims to develop an application for mobile devices, able to use its own database in the realization of the daily irrigation time calculation for each crop on a certain date. Techniques and software development tools were used specificly for the Android mobile platform. The application intends to assist in conducting a management with rational use of water in irrigated areas in the state of Ceará, semi-arid northeast, mitigating the lack of technical assistance specialized in precision farming, using databases with information necessary for the calculation of the need water and subsequent irrigation time recommendation. Among the installed databases, it has historical series of "potential reference evapotranspiration" for the past ten years in representative regions where the eight main irrigation schemes of the Ceará state: Curu-Paraipaba, Pentecostes, Baixo Acaraú, Araras Norte, Jaguaribe Apodi, Morada Nova, Tabuleiros de Russas e Icó-Lima Campos are located and also databases with information on the "crop coefficient" and "coverage percentage" of major crops exploited on the perimeters. This application was developed to present a new approach to irrigation management, making use of the available mobile phones in order to allow users to perform the calculation of the daily irrigation time in any of the irrigated perimeters of the Ceará state. The use of the application in simulation for the Irrigated Perimeter Baixo Acaraú demonstrated a reduction of approximately 26% over the current use of water in irrigation, allowing its use be concluded that provides good irrigation management and could result in an economy of water required to reduce the impact of recurring long and repetitive periods of drought on water resources of the state of Ceará.