Muscat: Oman’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Water Resources, has after the successful testing of drone-aided date palm farming, tested the technology in its pilot project, reports a leading Arabic news portal in Oman.
The initiative made possible with the technical collaboration with another company with proven expertise in this field, used liquid date pollen using drones. The application of this technology comes within a technical cooperation agreement to use drones and artificial intelligence in the agricultural field.
A reliable data source, researchgate, mentions that date palm, the primary agricultural crop in Oman, constitutes 80 per cent of all fruit crops produced and that the total farm area for date palm is equal to 50 per cent of the total agricultural area in the country. Oman is the eighth largest producer of dates in the world with an average annual production of 260,000 metric tonnes.
The pilot project in drone farming follows successful experiments carried out in the research farms of the General Directorate of Agricultural and Animal Research facility using liquid pollen, which was then transferred to farms through field workshop. These efforts come as part of the bigger scheme of implementing artificial intelligence in farming methods.
Efforts are also on to strengthening partnership with the private sector, especially emerging companies in the application of artificial intelligence in the agricultural sector.
