Preparation of Panchagavya and how to use it as plant growth promotor

The most prominent plant growth promoter and support  is Panchagavya or panchakavyam which literally means a 'concoction made of five products obtained from a cow'. The ingredients are Cow dung, Cow urine, Cow's milk, Curd and Ghee. These were mixed in correct combination and procedure and the mixture was fermented to get the wonder Elixir. This was a single solution for controlling the pests and boosting the plant growth and enhancing the yield, enriching the soil with useful minerals and useful microbes.

Preparation of Panchagavya:

We can now see how this is made:

The following items are required:

1. Fresh Cow dung  - 1kg

2). Cow urine- 1.5 liter  

3). Cow milk-1.5 liter  

4). Cow curd- 250 Ml 

5). Ghee – 250 gm 

6). Ripe yellow bananas (Poovan)  – 2 nos

7) Water -    1.5 liters

Procedure:

* Mix Cow dung and Ghee well and keep it covered in a wide mouthed plastic, cement or earthen container.( Avoid metal containers as this may react with metals.) Stir the contents thoroughly both in morning and evening and keep it covered with a fine mesh or cloth for 3 days. If not covered, the flies will lay eggs and we will have maggots in the preparation.

* After 3 days, mix cow urine and water and keep it covered for 15 days with regular mixing both in morning and evening.

* After 15 days add Cow's milk, Cow's curd and Bananas, mix well and keep it covered for another 15 days. 

* Do regular stirring daily, both in morning and evening and keep covered.

Panchagavya will be ready to use by then. 

Dosage and frequency of usage

10 Ml concentrate can be mixed in 1 liter water and filtered and used for foliar spray for plants from 4 leaf stage up to mature plants, once a week 20 –30 ml  Ml in 1 ltr water (3% solution) can be used for soil drench. This concentrate can be stored upto 6 months.

Improvement  on the formula: 

This concoction had been modified and bettered by many experts and now they have incorporated a few more ingredients. So while adding Banana, the following two can also be added

Tender coconut water – 500 Ml 

Jaggery - 3 kg ----- 500 gm

Balance is all the same. Some farmers add more items like sugar cane juice, fruit juices and toddy to introduce yeast for better fermentation. These inclusions will add to additional nutritional values for the preparation  

Chemical composition

pH                : 5.45 

EC dSm2 : 10.22

Total N (ppm) : 229

Total P (ppm) : 209

Total K (ppm) : 232

Sodium               : 90

Calcium               : 25

IAA (ppm) : 8.5

GA (ppm        : 3.5

Microbial Load

Fungi               : 38800/ml

Bacteria : 1880000/ml

Lactobacillus : 2260000/ml

Total anaerobes: 10000/ml

Acid formers : 360/ml

Methanogen    : 250/ml

Fatty acids Alkanes Alconol and Alcohols

View our sitemap

Read More

How to build geodesic domes using bamboo

The Geodesic domes are spherical in shape were lightweight triangular or polygonal facets consisting of either skeletal struts or flat planes, largely in tension, replace the arch principle and distribute stresses within the structure itself. 

There are probably as many different dome designs as there are dome builders. This is partly because size, geometry, designs and coverings can be modified according to the raw materials available. The design shown here, though not as grand as the ones developed by experts, still uses the same basic geometric form. It is simple to build and easy to dismantle. 

Depending on the type of covering you use, this design is suitable as a temporary or semi-permanent dwelling. 

The essentials:

To build your own dome home you will need the following:

• Time : about a day (although it will only take about an hour to put up and less to take down).

• Equipment : drill and drill bits, tape measure, protractor, hand saw and a vice (not essential but will make construction more accurate, particularly when drilling the holes).

• Materials : hazel poles or broomsticks, about 20mm (¾") in diameter, 1.5m (5') of 130mm (5") alcathene gas pipe and  260 split pins. These make it easy to erect and take down your dome.

Preparation

Step 1. Cut 35 poles to exactly the same length: 1050mm-1200mm (3'6"-4') would give even tall people adequate headroom. Do not cut them shorter than 900mm (3') unless building for children; and 1200mm (4') is probably the optimum length for the strength of materials and joints used in this design.

Step 2. Saw 30 more poles, which must be 11% shorter than the long poles. For example, if you cut the long poles to 1200mm (4') then your shorter poles will be 1070mm (3'6").

Step 3. Cut the alcathene gas pipe into sections 50mm (2") long to make the joints. You will need 26 joints in all.

Now you need to drill holes in the joints to hold the ends of the poles. The holes will need to be fractionally larger than the poles you use. For example, if you use standard household broomsticks which are roughly 20mm (¾") thick, holes will be cut to just less than 25mm (1") in diameter. This will ensure enough 'give' in the joints to create the angles necessary in dome building. You must make precise measurements. Be consistent, regardless of the dimensions you decide upon.

Assembly

Step 1. Assembling a prototype:Take one 5-hole joint and slot in five of the smaller poles.

Put two 4-hole joints at the base of the pentagon and slot three 6-hole joints onto the upright poles.

Step 2. At this point, measure where the holes need to be drilled in the poles either side of the pipe. Depending on the thickness of the pipe, this will be about 25mm (1") from the end of each pole and again about 25mm (1") further along the pole.

Once you have marked the poles, dismantle the pentagon. Sort the poles into two piles – long and short. Drill two holes in each end of every pole. It is vital that each hole is drilled in exactly the same position on every pole.

Step 3. Reassemble the pentagon and fasten the joints by inserting the split pins. Build from the middle outwards following the pattern as shown in video.

You can view the video in this post. Geodesic dome home was built in Aranya eco village, Berikai, Tamilnadu. 

Mango people an organization who helped in building Geodesic dome.

https://www.facebook.com/tuar6/videos/2211138169112779/?app=fbl

Video courtesy : #mangopeople #aranyaecovillage 

You can learn how to build geodesic domes practically through Auroville Bamboo centre.. The courses are going on.. :)

You can also contact #mangopeople an NGO in faridabad.

View our sitemap

#geodesicdomes #portableshelters, #bambooshelter 

Read More

About Farm Drone pesticide sprayers

In the present era, there are too many developments in precision agriculture for increasing the crop productivity. Especially, in the developing countries like India, over 70% of the rural people depends upon the agriculture fields. The agriculture fields faces dramatic losses due to the diseases. These diseases came from the pests and insets, which reduces the productivity of the crops. Pesticides and fertilizers are used to kill the insects and pests in order to enhance the crop quality. The WHO (World Health Organization estimated as one million cases of ill effected, when spraying the pesticides in the crop filed manually. The Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) – aircrafts are used to spray the pesticides to avoid the health problems of humans when they spray manually. UAVs or drones  can be used easily, where the equipment and labors difficulty to operate. This paper reviews briefly the implementation of  UAVs for crop monitoring and pesticide spraying.

A sprayer system is mounted on UAV for pesticides spraying. The integration of UAV with sprayer system results a potential to provide a platform to pest management and vector control. This is accurate site specific application for a large crop fields. For this purpose heavy lift UAVs or drone sprayers are required for large area of spraying. The efficiency of the spraying system which is mounted to the UAV or drone increases through the PWM controller in the pesticide applications. A petrol powered unmanned aerial vehicle Yamaha RMAX developed for pesticide spraying in rice fields of Asia. In comparison with ground based sprayers, deposition of pesticides from the developed UAV is almost similar. The RMAX is a crop sprayer for a high value crop environment. A prototype extendable to develop a drone with increasing volume mean diameter droplet size up to 300mm. The uses of drone in spraying operations are increasing because of its speed and accuracy. But, some factors reduce the crop quality like some area in the crop field is not covered properly while spraying, Crop areas overlapping and outer edges of the crop field in the spraying process. To overcome these factors, a swarm of Drones were used in a control loop of algorithm for agriculture operations, where unmanned aerial vehicles are the responsible for the spraying pesticides. The process of spraying the pesticides on the crop is organized by the feedback coming from the WSNs deployed in the field. The communication with each one is done by a control loop to adjust the route of unmanned aerial vehicle to changes in the speed of wind and number of messages exchanged in between. A short delay in the control loop, so that the unmanned aerial vehicle can analyze the data from WSN to further route. It could also minimize the waste of pesticides. An automatic navigation UAV spraying system MSP430 developed to direct the UAV in desired spray area.

Keeping in view of these facts, a crop monitoring and Pesticide spraying Drones are developed consisting of an automated drone system and sprinkling system with multi spectral camera. The sprinkling system is attached to the lower region off the UAV which has a nozzle beneath the pesticide tank to sprinkle the pesticide towards downstream. First monitoring is done by multi spectral camera, the camera scans the whole crop field and generates a spatial map. This map manifest the condition of the crop through NDVI and then the farmer evaluates which type of pesticides/fertilizers apply on the crop.

UAVs in precision agriculture is still in its early stage and maybe a scope for further development in both the technology and the agriculture applications. Providentially, it is expended that with the development of UAV'S technology, improved image processing techniques, lower costs, flying times, batteries, new camera designs, low volume sprayers, and nozzle types. A significant number of experimental studies of UAV'S based remote sensing for agriculture application. It will be a more prominent advantages of these systems in precision agriculture and environmental monitoring.

Conclusion: The drone sprayers are costly. The drone service centers are less in number. They are suitable for large scale land holders. Proper training is needed to run the drones. 

View our sitemap

#dronesprayers #farmdrones

Read More

About setting up farm weather stations

Farm Weather stations will be helpful for open field plantations and is one of the best-understood data capture requirements in agriculture. The micro weather data comprises of temperature, humidity, pressure, rain, wind speed, wind direction, solar radiation, evaporation, soil moisture, and temperature etc..

Temperature and humidity are common across most of the requirements. The plants require a certain temperature and humidity range to thrive. The fungi and pathogens also thrive in certain environmental conditions. Like, mildew worms in grapes happen in certain leaf wetness, temperature and rain conditions. open field agriculture practitioners may also need evaporation and solar radiation data.

Rain and soil are also critical variables. Soil needs to be monitored at different depths. Water intensive crops need soil moisture sensors to check if the roots are getting water or not. Soil nutrients like NPK need to be monitored to check soil health. Different soil can have different pH and thus suitability for different crops.

 

Temperature and humidity can be done with help of semiconductor sensors. The way to measure rain is via gauges or tipping rain buckets. Wind speed and direction sensors are analog sensors. The rate of evaporation can be monitored using an evaporation PAN. A depth sensor can be used for automatic pan depth measurements. For disease onset and prediction, four sensors, namely, Rain, Leaf wetness, temperature, and humidity are critical. Leaf wetness sensors try to mimic the presence of water on leaves using conductivity or capacitive measurements.

The availability of the hyper local weather data is critical to scope out the farm level conditions. The data captured from satellites are at a much lower resolution and cannot help answer farm level questions. A grid of weather stations capturing micro weather data can be deployed to collect real-time data from the field that can be used to analyzed weather conditions and develop advisories.

Can build Arduino based weather stations on our own. Tutorials available online.

Or we can choose readymade farm weather station available in the markets. One such company is YuktIx technologies. You can contact them for more info.

YuktIx Technologies

www.yuktix.com

+91-9910908382

View our sitemap

Read More