Precision Irrigation, Variable Rate Irrigation, Fuzzy Systems, Site-Specific Irrigation Control, Irrigation Decision Support System, Remote Sensing

Freshwater is a scarce resource, and nowadays it is under unprecedented focus due to concerns about the sustainability of natural ecosystems and because of the high agricultural demand, which needs to feed a growing global population. These concerns make freshwater a necessary natural resource for everyone. All these issues lead us to want to manage this asset more efficiently, thus generating an increase in the demand for more intelligent, more automated and more accurate systems. These needs are the driving force behind the development and implementation of new technologies for more rational use, allowing farmers to improve when and where irrigation is applied, seeking to increase food production. In this manner, this work presents a new proposal for an intelligent variable rate irrigation system application in order to achieve that goal. It will be a site-specific irrigation management tool; in other words, a system that should assist in decisions about applying water quantity to delimited zones. We expect a higher yield from crop productivity and greater efficiency in water use. To be successful, the system has an artificial intelligence approach to automatically create optimal control maps for a center pivot irrigation system. At the heart of this system there will be the fuzzy logic, which will be able to set the reference values for the rotating speed controllers and individual opening of each central pivot sprinkler valve. The proposed system will be based on the decision making (whether applying more or less water) and will use remote sensing data, so we expect the smart irrigation system to describe the spatial variability of the crop efficiently. The results point out that the edaphoclimatic variables, when well combined with fuzzy logic, can solve uncertainties and non-linearities of an irrigation system and define a control model for high precision irrigation. However, it will not always be possible to reduce water consumption, but this technology has many uses to increase farm profitability.