Agriculture is the backbone of our country and economy; it contributes 26% of India's GDP, and provides employment to 60% population. Current farming practices do not efficiently utilize resources like water, fertilizers and pesticides. Precision agriculture is a agri-management philosophy to eliminate the ill effects of over and under usage of resources. Precision agriculture helps in efficient usage of resources and crop disease forecasting. The variation in environmental parameters and soil properties over the field are mapped and then appropriate actions are taken.

 The deployment of the Agri-Sens at Sula Vineyard, Nasik (India) was carried out in two phases. The first phase was carried out during January 2007. The deployment focused on establishing feasibility of capturing, analyzing data and facilitated global data accessibility from seven  wireless sensor pods. The second phase of deployment was carried out in June 2007. A sensor network was deployed in a section of Sula Vineyard. They mapped various parameters like soil temperature, soil moisture, ambient temperature, ambient humidity and salinity of the soil, which are critical for quality of grapes and hence the wine being produced. With the value of soil moisture obtained from the sensor, the system automatically turns On and Off the water sprinkler to maintain a specific moisture level in the soil. The SPANN Lab researchers spent three days there deploying the system and analyzing its performance. Later the system was left there to monitor the different environmental parameters and the data was collected using the data logger developed at SPANN Lab, IIT Bombay and this data is sent to a server at SPANN Lab. A group of researchers are analyzing this live data. This study will help in efficient irrigation and disease forecasting.

        This deployment consisted of 20 nodes and an embedded base station. Every node has temperature, humidity, soil moisture and soil temperature sensors and a mote that routes the sensed data to the base station according to a routing protocol, developed at SPANN Lab. The node gets its power from a solar cell mounted on top of it, so the system does not require external power and is self sustaining. The base station collects this data and transmits this data over GPRS to SPANN Lab, where it is being analyzed. The complete system was designed at SPANN Lab.

        This deployment is very well received by the people at Sula wines. Still in beta testing phase, AgriSens system promises to help the farmers and to change the future of Indian agriculture.