Silal, Abu Dhabi-based food and agritech company, in collaboration with Hoogendoorn, one of the world’s innovators in horticulture, on Tuesday launched the Digital Agronomy Service, which will see deployment of IoT sensors in 100 farms over the course of 2022.
This project is aimed at enabling local farmers and advisors to make better decisions on irrigation, fertilization, and crop management to maximize locally-grown fresh produce.
Through this collaboration, Silal will apply IoT sensors to capture key parameters affecting crop growth in greenhouses and net-houses, in order to optimize resource use efficiency and productivity.
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. The sensors will also determine the status of crop growth and input requirements, such as water, energy, CO2, fertilizers and agrichemical applications. 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.
This 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, produce quality and profitability.
Salmeen Obaid Alameri, CEO of Silal said the Digital Agronomy Service is in line with the company’s mandate to introduce innovative technology enabled solutions to deliver sustainable local agriculture production and support the UAE’s food sustainability efforts.
Martin Helmich, CCO of Hoogendoorn Growth Management, commented, “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.”