Development of an Automated Management System for the Traceability of Spraying in Fruit Orchads

A system for managing and monitoring agricultural labors at farm level was developed and tested in an agrochemical application. The system is constituted by an electronics box mounted on the tractor and software that acquire and analyze data from the application task. The electronics box consists of a microcontroller, a GPS, sensors, a keyboard, a SD memory reader and a LCD screen. This device is able to store in a SD’s memory the data of the position and the instantaneous speed of the tractor, the applied dose, the speed and absolute wind direction, the temperature and relative humidity in-situ. In addition it can generate alert of unfavorable climatic conditions for the agro-chemical applications. The interface to the user is software that allows generating a job order identifying the operator name, the tractor, the spraying equipment, the pesticide, the dose and the sector of application. In addition it allows analyzing the output data in graphical form, generating maps of speed, applied volume and dose. The map of the route is also drawing up on Google-Earth for a better spatial visualization. All the tasks carried out are stored in a data base administered by this software. With this tool it is possible to verify if the norms that establish environmental conditions apt for the application of pesticide are fulfilled, besides checking the variability of the dose and jumps of rows, along with reports with indices of performance of the operator. The system has been tested in two important vineyards of Chile with promissory results.