Now Better Crop Yield with RFID

Filed in archive Implementation on January 7, 2007

Up till now you thought that rich soil, water and fertilizers were one of the most important ingredients for producing a good crop but now you need to add one more thing if you would like a better crop- it is RFID tags. You must be wondering how an RFID tag could help in producing improved crops. Let me throw some light on how it could aid in improving crop pr'

Ceàgo Vinegarden in California is deploying passive RFID tags for improving the quality of grapes it produces, minimizing environmental impact of crop on the neighboring countryside and improving the operations.

Besides employing traditional methods the farm is employing modern methods which include handheld RFID readers with GPS functionality for keeping a tab on humidity, soil moisture, temperature, solar radiation, air and soil temperature to keep a tab on how much ripeness the grape has achieved. As of now the farm has around five hundred passive RFID tags fixed to posts at the end of vine rows. Handheld readers are used by the workers for interrogating the tags for identification of rows. It has now become easier to keep a tab on samples taken and pinpoint responsibilities. In the future it would also become possible to detect the health of grapes and find out if it has been inflicted by any disease.

The technology could also be implemented to other crops successfully and it would be very much possible to prevent losses due to crop damage and feed a larger number of mouths.