RAWALPINDI:Three-day International Precision Agriculture Pakistan Conference (PAPC) 2022 has concluded here at Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi (PMAS-AAUR).
The conference was organized by PMAS-AAUR Center for Precision Agriculture (CPA) with an aim to provide researchers, scientists, and industrial personnel a platform to join hands in achieving goals of increasing farm profitability and reducing environmental impacts.
The international participation from different countries of the world including USA, Canada, China, Turkey and Australia both physically and through Zoom was also overwhelming.
Over 200 researchers participated in the workshop including students, academic researchers, and representatives from the private and public agriculture sector.
PMAS-AAUR Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Qamar uz Zaman, in his address emphasized that Pakistani agriculture is facing environmental pollution, adverse effects of climate change, water shortages and stressed on industry-academia linkage to address the challenges being faced by the farmers’.
He was of the view that there is dire need to manage agriculture fields by adopting precision agriculture technologies.
Pakistan has a huge potential in the area of Precision agriculture which would also be helpful to minimize the yield gaps and ensure food security, he added.
Keynote speaker, Dr. Aitizaz Farooque from the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada gave a presentation on the use of ’machine vision’ thermal imagery using drone technology, artificial intelligence, digital photography technique and sensor integration into agricultural equipment for real time soil plant and yield mapping to assess the irrigation water needs of agriculture crop production.
He said that precision agriculture technologies are meant to increase production efficiency, profitability and environmental efficiency.
The three-day conference would also help to establish cooperation between professionals, academic researchers, students, relevant government agencies and industry.
Different topics including crop protection & Precision agriculture, Variable rate technologies, Artificial intelligence & image processing, UAVs & agricultural robotics, Climate & water and environmental monitoring for precision agriculture were also discussed in the conference.