Abu Dhabi-based leading fresh food and agritech company Silal, in collaboration with Netherland-based horticulture innovator Hoogendoorn, has launched the Digital Agronomy Service, to deploy IoT (Internet of Things) sensors in 100 farms for 2022.
Through this collaboration, Silal will place IoT sensors to capture key parameters affecting crop growth in greenhouses and net-houses, to optimize resource use efficiency and productivity.
The IoT initiative will help the company in determining the status of crop growth and input requirements of farms across the emirate, to devise prudent agriculture plans and projects. For farmers, this initiative will help to drive farm productivity, products quality and profitability.
The data collected by the IoT sensors can provide a real-time picture of what’s going on in the field. It enables local farmers and advisors to make better decisions on irrigation, fertilization and crop management to maximize new locally grown products.
Salmeen Obaid Alameri CEO – Silal
“The agricultural sector has undergone several revolutions, perhaps the most transformative of which is the use of agritech. At Silal, we believe that digital transformation is key to enhance agricultural sustainability practices while empowering local farmers and helping them increase their crop yields.”
The Silal CEO further added that, “We launched the new Digital Agronomy Service to support the decision-making process while enhancing resource use efficiency, thereby providing world-class services to Abu Dhabi farmers. This comes in line with our mandate to introduce innovative technology-enabled solutions to deliver sustainable local agriculture production and support the UAE’s food sustainability efforts.”
Meanwhile, Mr. Martin Helmich, CCO of Hoogendoorn Growth Management, remarked that “Local production is becoming increasingly important, globally and especially in the Middle East. We witness enormous interest in technology and knowledge to increase local fresh produce and efficient use of resources and inputs in this region.”
Mr. Helmich further added that “Therefore, Hoogendoorn has committed to working with Silal to help the local growers, and we will deploy our IoT technologies, advance data analytics and crop knowledge to create world-class agronomic decision support service to support local food production in the UAE.”
This initiative will deploy a wide range of IoT sensors to capture key parameters, such as temperature, humidity, vapor difference, radiation, pH, soil moisture, electric conductivity, among others. These data will be connected to AI-powered computers and used by Silal’s agriculture engineers to devise crop growth models, thereby making better agronomic decisions and increasing productivity.
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