Abstract:
Home gardening in Sri Lanka has faced many difficulties due to the busy lives of the people and
the scarcity of water resources. Water would be the main requirement of backyard farming. The
purpose of the study was to evaluate the water consumption of an automated drip irrigation
system for different types of grow bags for the growing of Capsicum annuum. This experiment was
done in the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna. The experiment was carried out with two
different growing media according to Randomized Complete Block Design with eight replicates.
Two different growing media were included; commercial coco peat grow bag and a multilayer
gunny bag. Sensor-based automated drip irrigation system was established to compare the water
consumption of two growing media. The automated drip irrigation system was prepared using
Arduino mega microcontroller resistive soil moisture sensors, submersible water pumps, water
tubes, tanks, and microchip. The yield parameters of two growing media were compared.
According to the results multilayer gunny bag showed lower daily water consumption and it was
significantly different compared to the commercial coco peat grow bag. Multilayer gunny bag can
also be used as successful growing media with higher yield of Chilli in domestic level compared to
Commercial coco peat grow bag.
