Intel-Irris

According to FAO, small-scale farming has an enormous contribution to food security and to rural economy. However, smallholders usually face a number of constraints that are impeding their productivity, profitability and contribution to economic growth. Water resource is one of the major constraints and the situation is foreseen to worsen due to water shortage in relation with current excessive use and climate change. Controlled and improved irrigation can save water while maximising plant growth and yield. The project will provide the smallholder farmers a more efficient management of its available water by deploying of an open, low-cost and autonomous irrigation control system based on IoT and smart technologies. The irrigation process to decide/suggest how much water is needed to maintain the optimal production potential without water wasting can be adapted (i) for a particular crop, (ii) at a particular moment and (iii) for a given soil type and condition because it will be seconded by algorithms predicting the behaviour of the complex soil/plant/atmosphere system.

The goal of Intel-IrriS is to contribute in not only saving water but also in increasing the water usage efficiency, while taking into account the specificities of socio-economic contexts of smallholder farmers as well as current irrigation practices. Existing solutions are generally very expensive and provide raw data which are not easy to be used directly by small farmers. Therefore, Intel-IrriS main objectives are (1) to reduce the cost of smart technologies for smallholders – dividing the cost by a factor between 10 and 100, (2) to increase adoption of smart technologies by smallholders by “translating” raw data into readable information used for making decision about irrigation adjustment (reducing total amount of water through improved timing and real-time adaptation to the agro-environmental conditions) and (3) to increase on a long-term the smallholders’ sustained production and income, as well as the local innovation opportunities and capacities. Figure 1 in next page illustrates and summarizes the Intel-IrriS project in the form of an info diagram. The rest of the document describes with more details what actions Intel-IrriS will implement to realize the project main objectives.

1. University of Pau & Adour Countries, Computer Science Research (UPPA/LIUPPA) FR – Coordinator
2. French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD), FR
3. OPEN INNOVATION PLATFORM FOR IOT-BIG DATA (WAZIUP e.V.), DE
4. Agricultural University of Athens (AUA), GR
5. Université Cadi Ayyad Ecole Nationale des Sciences Appliquées (ENSA – Safi), Morocco
6. National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA), Morocco
7. Industrial Computing and Networks University of Oran 1 Ahmed Benbella (RIIR), Algeria
8. University of Abdelhamid Ibn Badis, Mostaganem (UMAB), Algeria