Decision support system for soil and water analysis and fertiliser recommendation for flue-cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco

Abstract

Soil fertility and water quality play an important role on the productivity of any crop. Soil and water test based fertilizer recommendation will help the farmers to optimize the resources and to improve the productivity. Decision Support System (DSS) was developed for calculating the instrument reading into final value of the test parameters of soil (pH, EC, organic carbon, available nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium and chloride) and water (pH, EC, chloride), to suggest the recommended doses of fertilizers for Flue-Cured Virginia (FCV) tobacco crop and to test their suitability for tobacco cultivation. DSS on soil and water analysis for tobacco crop was developed with Visual Basic. Net as Front-end and MSAccess as Back-end. In this system, by entering instrument reading, it will be transformed into soil / water testing value of the concerned parameter which will be compared with recommended values and finally suitability of soil and water for tobacco cultivation will be judged and recommended fertilizer doses for different tobacco zones will be prepared and printed in the prescribed format. This software will be helpful to the researchers / technical personnel in reducing time for preparation of reports, minimizing the errors in manual calculation and improves the precision. This system can be applicable to any soil testing laboratories, where recommendations are given to different crops based on soil and water test values with suitable modifications.