Análise econômica de unidade semiautomática para irrigação de baixo custo controlado via aplicativo para produção de rúcula

Abstract

With the constant increases in water and energy costs, in addition to the limited amount of these resources, the automation of processes such as irrigation can help producers to increase production. Therefore, the objective of this research was to evaluate the performance of low-cost automatic systems for irrigation management in the production of vegetables and to compare them with manual systems. The experiment was conducted in randomized blocks with 4 types of irrigation management, divided into automatic and manual systems: automatic handling via soil (IAS); automatic handling via climate (IAC), manual handling via soil (IMS) and manual handling via climate (IMC). Each treatment had 8 experimental plots, thus totaling 32 experimental plots. The culture studied was aragula (Eruca sativa) with a 30-day production cycle, where three prices were used as parameters, R$ 1.90, R$ 2.50 and R$ 3.50, respectively, depending on the production of bundles (250 g). Automatic systems had a higher gross revenue compared to manual systems, as they had higher productivity values. However, due to its high cost in relation to the others, the IAC presented the worst results in terms of benefit-cost ratio, which was not reflected in the IAS, which, although also having high costs, presented excellent results of 1.48, 1.95 and 2.73. The IMS showed the best results of 1.81, 2.38 and 3.34, being the best option among the studied treatments.