Soil Analysis for Fertilizer and Crop Prediction

Using Optical Sensors and Machine Learning

[1],
Swathi T S Vinayak R Bhat [2], Y Sai Meghana [3], Yashas PM [4], Prof Raghu B R [5]
[1][2][3][4] - Department of ECE, Dayananda Sagar Academy of Technology and Management, Bengaluru, Karnataka,
India.
[1] [2] [3]
swathikuntagod@gmail.com , vinayakbhat94@gmail.com , meghasai555@gmail.com ,
[4]
pmyashas98@gmail.com
[5] – Assistant Professor, Department of ECE, Dayananda Sagar Academy of Technology and Management, Bengaluru,
Karnataka, India.
[5]
raghubrgowda@gmail.com

Abstract - Consequently, farmers are unable to choose
the right crops based on the soil environmental factors
like Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, and other contents
in the soil. The process of manually testing the soil takes
several weeks to arrive back from the lab and even after
the soil sampling, the right crop is not predicted only the
nutrients present in them are reported which is a time-
consuming process. To overcome this problem, we
propose this system of crop prediction using machine
learning which contains sensors that can predict the
Nitrogen(N), Phosphorus(P), Potassium(K), pH,
temperature, moisture, Sulphur(S), Calcium(Ca),
Manganese(Mn), Copper(Cu), Iron(Fe), Zinc(Zn),
Boron(B), Chloride(Cl), Nickel(Ni), Molybdenum(Mo)
contents in the soil and transmit time-stamped live data
to the spreadsheet using which machine learning
algorithms analyse the data and predict the fertilizer and
crop suitable for the area to increase the quality and yield
of the crop.
Keywords- Decision Tree, Machine Learning, Crop
Prediction, Fertilizer Prediction, Optical Sensor, Soil Ph
Sensor.
Ⅰ. INTRODUCTION
Agriculture plays an important role in food industry
which accounts 18% of India’s GDP and it is the
backbone of our country. Production of food grains in
India is estimated to be 292 million tons, as per Indian
Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) estimations
the demand would increase to 346 million tons by the end
of this decade. Increase in population should not lead to
food crisis. India having wide range of weather
conditions and different types of soil which is used for
growing various types of crops the average productivity
of many crops are low. Low yield in agriculture sector is
one of the biggest problems in India. Poor infrastructure,
wrong use of farm techniques decreases the fertility of
the soil due to the use of pesticides and fertilizers. Soil
analysis is an important process to determine the
available nutrients for the plants in the soil, plants absorb
these major nutrients of the soil for their growth. The
process of manually testing the soil takes several weeks
to arrive back from lab and even after the soil sampling,
the right crop is not predicted. Farmers are unable to
choose the right crops based on the soil nutrients like
Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potassium, Sulphur, Calcium,
Manganese, Copper, Iron, Zinc, Boron, Chloride, Nickel,
Molybdenum contents in the soil. Our aim is to create a
prediction engine for most suitable crops for a particular
soil and also suggest the fertilizer which consists the
minerals required for a specific crop.
Ⅱ. LITERATURE SURVEY
In [1]: This paper describes the development of crop
prediction system to predict crop based on humidity
sensor, temperature sensor and NPK sensor to get details
about the moisture content in the soil, temperature of the
surrounding and Nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium
contents in the soil and then these readings are sent to
Arduino UNO board. Using a wi-fi module the data
gathered like Temperature, Humidity and NPK values by
different sensors is sent to the cloud using Arduino board.
The data from the sensors are stored in Influx DB cloud
which is an open-source cloud storage. Data is updated to
Influx DB cloud regularly. Grafana dashboard is an
inbuilt feature within Influx DB which shows the
graphical representation of the gathered data i.e., stored
in cloud. To predict the future values of the data, they are
processed by machine learning technique. The Long
Short-Term Memory Network (LSTM), a tier of RNNs,
is chosen for its formal application in managing nonlinear
dynamic systems.
In view of the anticipated Temperature, Humidity and
NPK esteems, the system can distinguish the reasonable
harvest and what kind of water system can be liked for
the yield will be recommended to the users i.e., farmers.
This is finished with the assistance of application. The
application is made utilizing android studio
programming. This application will show the
temperature, humidity and nutrients of the soil.
Additionally gives a caution about the low moisture
region to give the water to that region. It utilizes
anticipated temperature and supplements to predict the
best crop to be cultivated. The proposed framework is
displayed in the underneath outline.
Fig. Proposed system flow diagram
In [2]: In this paper, the IoT is incorporated with machine
learning to build the framework with the help of an LDR
sensor and Logistic Regression Algorithm to work with
the farmers about the awareness of soil nutrients
inadequacy and appropriate fertilizer to be added to the
fields at the legitimate time. The information detected by
the designed NPK sensor from the chosen farming fields
is sent to the cloud utilizing the Thingspeak tool.
Thingspeak is software that coordinates between Cloud
computing and the Internet of things (IoT). The soil
samples are examined with the LDR module and their
mineral composition data is stored in the Thingspeak
cloud. Thingspeak creates a channel between Arduino
UNO and the cloud.
The board is associated with this channel utilizing Wi-Fi
Module. Application programming interface (API) keys
are utilized to associate with the cloud. There are two API
keys for the channel READAPIKEY and
WRITEAPIKEY. A data set is made by recording LDR
information and NPK mineral qualities. On this database,
a supervised algorithm called logistic regression
algorithm is applied. Accordingly, the machine learning
model is trained with predefined datasets. The anticipated
information from the Machine learning model is
currently saved for future reference. The results of the
analysis is utilized for predicting the appropriate
Fertilizer from the Fertilizer data set and afterward, the
suggestions are shipped off the farmer's device utilizing
the GSM module.
In [3]: The system aims to assist farmers with smart
choice while predicting the crops. To extend the
accuracy alongside live data, historic data for
temperature and humidity from government
website is additionally collected and stored.
Additionally, historic rainfall data is collected and
stored. To be clear and precise in crop prediction, the
project examines the temperature and humidity of the
field, live information gathered utilizing DHT-22 sensor,
notable information gathered from government site or
potentially google climate API, kind of the soil utilized
by the fa rmer and the historic rainfall data. It tends to be
accomplished utilizing unsupervised or supervised
machine learning algorithm. By learning organizations,
dataset is prepared. The precision obtained by various
machine learning techniques compared to get the most
dependable outcome which will be conveyed to the end
user. Alongside the most reasonable yield, the system
additionally suggests the fertilizer for that crop.
Responsive, Multilingual site is utilized by farmer to
communicate with the system.
In [4]: This paper proposes a system that needs installing
required sensors in agricultural land. The IoT sensors are
established in farms to monitor the farm environment. The
sensor equipment can help detect the temperature,
humidity, pH value of the soil. The data of the IoT sensors
are transmitted to the server. Data from all sensors are often
exported from the database to undergo data analysis. The
system does analyse the environmental factors of the farm
and selects suitable crops. Before analysing any data, the
system performs feature extraction like suitable months,
soil types to ensure that both the analysed data and the
analysis result of predetermined targets are accurate.
Data sets are collected that consist of different varieties of
crops and their suitable climate conditions such as
temperature, soil type and pH. The proposed approach
consists of Arduino UNO and sensors like DHT11 and soil pH
sensors. DHT11 sensor is a temperature and humidity sensor,
which is put in the land to take the temperature and humidity
value. The predefined data sets are loaded in CSV format
to the supervised machine learning algorithm like KNN
Classification Algorithm. Then sensor outputs are given
to the machine learning algorithm. In the backend, the
machine learning model will investigate the qualities and
return the best 5 yields that are appropriate to plant
within the user’s land. After the plantation, the user can
screen the crop utilizing the web application. Farmers can
notice the sensor outputs and take necessary actions
when a ny rapid change happens to the crop.
In [5]: The proposed approach in this paper is a web-
based application that suggests and advises the suitable
crop for the land. The factors like temperature, humidity,
soil moisture, soil pH is taken in real-time using the
sensors. For the proficient computation of NPK values,
the soil is clinically tested. The four factors and NPK
values are now considered and predict which crop will be
suitable for that soil using this system. The sensors are
interfaced with Raspberry Pi, and it collects the sensor's
output data. A predefined dataset is prepared with 5
attributes like temperature, humidity, pH, moisture and
NPK values. The data from the sensors, NPK values and
predefined data set is given to the machine learning
algorithm (SVM). The model is prepared for more than
30000 combinations in this manner increasing the
precision.
The data needs to be pre-processed prior to training. The
information is pre-processed through methods like Data
Cleaning, Label Encoding and CSV File generation. The
two libraries used for Data Cleaning are Numpy and
Pandas. A monitor is utilized to see the output from the
controller. It is connected to Raspberry pi utilizing a
VGA to HDMI cable. The users can access the webpage
through this screen. The system can also advise whether
the particular crop can be cultivated in the land and give
appropriate fertilizer suggestions. As the system lists out
all possible crops, it helps the farmer to make an accurate
decision of which crop to be cultivated.
In [6]: In this paper, the proposed framework analyses the
essential constituents of soil, like temperature and
moisture which significantly influence the nature of the
soil. This system includes LM293 Comparator used with
a soil moisture sensor, DS18B201 Temperature sensor,
TS230 Colour RGB sensor for measuring soil nutrients,
Arduino board along with the breadboard. Sensors sense
the moisture, temperature, NPK values of a particular soil
sample and give the value to the Arduino board in real-
time. The power supply of 9V is applied to the Arduino
Board with the help of an adapter for collecting various
information of soil and the sensors which are connected
to the hardware require 3.3V-5V power. With the help of
Arduino, Nitrogen, Phosphorus and potassium values are
received for determining soil quality. Arduino shows the
NPK values, temperature, and moisture values on the
display screen. In this paper, machine learning
algorithms such as Random Forest Classifier, Support
Vector Machine and Logistic Regression are used on
agriculture data. After the information is gathered
utilizing Arduino it is being shown in the serial monitor.
Now the data are being exported to the Excel sheet in
CSV format. This is done using a data streamer present
in Excel. This .CSV file contains five different fields like
soil moisture data, temperature data and NPK data.
Speech synthesis applications can be very useful for
normal humans as well as persons having some disability
like dyslexia where the person has some reading
disability. Research has found out that various speech
assistance tools and software are very helpful for such
people. Serverless applications are the new era of
computing, but according to some research for heavy
data applications like databases, big data applications and
video streaming, the serverless approach is not suitable.
But in this paper which is based on micro-services
architecture, a serverless application is suitable. With
almost no monetary investment, the text data can be
converted to speech-enabled output. AWS has provided
the best documentation for developers and technology-
enabled persons. The documentation for AWS Lambda,
DynamoDB, API Gateway, SNS, S3, etc. helped a lot to
configure the components of this application.
In [7]: Data mining technique is used to predict the yield of
the crop and maximize its productivity. Here the proposed
data is clustered using decision tree and SVM algorithms and
the yield of the crop is predicted based on generated rules.
Using the historic data collected the district/area and the crop
is given as an input to the module and the crop is
recommended by the decision tree and SVM algorithms. The
accuracy of the algorithms is also calculated compared and a
sample graph is generated.
In [8]: In this proposed system, using a remotely checked
ripeness method, the conventional cultivating strategy of
testing and soil ripeness is supplanted. With the help of this
framework, the farmer can get information about soil richness.
The nature of the soil is resolved by utilizing electrochemical
sensors. They have used a PH sensor to know the soil
ripeness. The Kind of soil is predicted by using the decision
tree algorithm and they will anticipate the harvests reasonable
for the specific kind of soil. And they also recommend
the prerequisites of the supplements if a farmer needs to
yield a specific harvest in a similar soil.
In [9]: In this paper, the model for Crop selection and its
yield prediction is implemented using Machine Learning
algorithms like Decision tree for classification and Linear
regression for yield prediction to maximize the crop
yield. This also gives an approximate percentage of yield
based on the data available in the dataset. This system
gets the input such as state name, district name, a season
for classifying the crop, and inputs such as year and
available yield area for predicting the crop production.
This system analyses the crop yield production based on
available data in the dataset. To classify the crops based
on location and season they used the decision tree
algorithm and for crop yield production they used the
Linear regression method. The suitable crop to be
cultivated is obtained from decision tree classifiers such
as state name, district name, season, and fed as an input
to the linear regression algorithm to find the yield of that
selected crop. This proposed system reduces the need for
costlier hardware and the time to acquire knowledge
about suitable crops. Also selecting crops for cultivation
becomes an easier task for farmers because the selection
of the correct crop for their location is precisely
implemented using this project.
In [10]: In this paper, the proposed approach is to build a
semi-autonomous agro robot with a completely secured
and reliable system for simplifying the endeavours
undertaken by farmers. The agro robot for testing was
created with FRDM KL25Z utilizing ARM Cortex M0+
processor. Further, the precise need for power was
overcome with solar energy for extended periods and
piezo power supply for shorter periods. On leading the
pathway for the robot, the image processing using NI
myRIO was carried out utilizing the NI LabVIEW
software.This also enhanced the value
proposition concerning accuracy in real-time
implementation. They made sure that the app interface
is linked automatically to the local bodies and
agricultural units for empowering the bad pattern of
farming by identifying them based on the copy of results
obtained. The PTC ThingWorx composer is used to
provide fast streaming of sensor data to the end-user with
the help of widgets and locate the agro robot movement
with the help of GPS coordinates. With the trained set of
data based on historic weather conditions and the nature
of the soil, the crop quality factor is evaluated using
machine learning algorithms. On supplementing the
proposed system with a real-time interface, the PTC
Vuforia platform can be dealt with for the Augmented
Reality development where the agricultural parameters
can be visualized in actual scenarios and driven for the
operation of the robot.
ⅡI. METHODOLOGY
Soil analysis is an important process to predict a crop or
fertilizer best suitable for cultivation. To analyse the soil
quality and nutrients in the soil this proposed system uses
pH, Moisture and optical sensors to predict moisture,
temperature, Ph, Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium and
other nutrient values present in the soil using an Arduino.
The time-stamped live data sensed by the sensor is sent to
the Arduino using an RS485 Modbus which helps in the
serial transmission of the data it is further sent to
spreadsheet and Python IDLE used for predicting the crop.
The decision tree algorithm is used to predict the crop and
fertilizer best suitable for cultivation from the analysed soil
sample. The decision tree is a supervised machine learning
algorithm that consists of predefined data set having a firm
ability to learn and can compromise the non-linear
relationship between input and output. The predicted crop
and the fertilizer which is best suitable for the soil are
displayed using the Tkinter library.
The decision tree is a machine learning classifier, used for
classification and regression analysis. The process of
building a Decision Tree starts from the root node and this
root node contains all the crops and fertilizers specified in
the dataset. When the first nutrient in the soil is analysed,
the decision tree classifier algorithm groups all the crops
and fertilizers into one node which are corresponding to the
nutrients present in the soil, and groups the rest of the crops
and fertilizers into the other node.
Further, when the next nutrient in the soil is analysed, it
again repeats the same process of grouping the crop and
fertilizer into two different nodes. This classification
process continues until the last step where the classification
ends and the crop which is present at the end of the
classification is the predicted crop and fertilizer.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this project, we have proposed an innovative approach
for smart agriculture using optical sensors and machine
learning. The proposed system helped in collecting the
parameters present in the soil using different sensors and
Arduino. The collected information is then used for
analysis of the soil and predicting the crop and fertilizer.
The NPK, Temperature, Moisture, Ph sensors are
inserted into the soil to be tested. The outputs of these
sensors are stored in the spreadsheet. Using the amount
of Nitrogen(N), Phosphorus(P), Potassium(K), pH,
temperature, moisture, Sulphur(S), Calcium (Ca),
Manganese (Mn), Copper (Cu), Iron (Fe), Zinc (Zn),
Boron(B), Chloride (Cl), Nickel (Ni), Molybdenum (Mo)
contents present in the soil and historical data in the
database, fertilizer and crop is predicted using machine
learning algorithms. This system will be used to reduce
the difficulties faced by the farmers and will increase the
quantity and quality of work done by them.
V. REFERENCES
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Krishna College of Engineering and Technology,
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Lakshmi Surekha, P Gopala Krishna, Department of
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Siddhartha Engineering College, JNTUK, Andhra
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