Development of a low-cost portable PAR device for crop management

Context: It becomes essential to have precise monitoring of crop growth to ensure rapid action in case of problems. Plant growth depends on the biomass accumulated by photosynthesis that requires as an energy source, the photosynthetically active radiation (PAR). This local variable is essential to study the plant phenology and for ecophysiological models that predict the accumulation of dry matter on a daily basis. Objectives: We design and evaluate a low-cost portable device, PAR Acquisition Device (PARADe), combining a PAR radiation sensor and a microcontroller acquisition card (Arduino) in order to measure automatically the in-field photosynthetically active radiation.