Wireless Sensor Networks: Apple Farming in Northern India

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) is an emerging technology that has spread rapidly into various multidisciplinary fields. Recently the agriculture and farming industry has diverted their attention to WSN, seeking this cost effective technology to improve its production and enhance agriculture yield standard. This paper presents a brief survey of WSN and its uses in agricultural practices. Main emphasis of our study is on the use of WSN for apple farming and precision agriculture. Our paper presents a detail report on the land area used for apple farming in India. This paper also discusses some of the challenges in using WSN for apple farming. Despite of having vast area of land for cultivation, detailed finding of our study reports the poor yield (production per unit area) of apples in India. Our survey report also suggests the use of WSN for increasing the apple production.