‘Pakistan becomes first country in world to map crops via satellite’

LAHORE: Pakistan has become first country in the world to use multi-spectral imagery for various crops mapping with 10-meter resolution with remote sensing through UK Satellite Sentinel 2A to determine the kind, health of crops and moisture in soil and to predict the quantum of production.

Dr Umar Saif, Founding Vice-Chancellor of Information Technology University (ITU), Punjab and Chairman Punjab Information Technology Board (PITB) said during an interview with a private TV channel on project "Food@Home" here Friday.

Dr Saif said that for crop mapping now there was no dependency on anyone as being done in the past to use android phones to report with GPS location as the google gave three-meter resolution in black and while Satellite Sentinel 2A, which passes over Pakistan space once a week. It gave 13 colours imagery to help identify various crops data, including seed quality, growth, disease, area of cultivation, yield, impact on economy and to determine export potential of excess crop, he stated.

He said the after two years of research and development, we were launching Punjab's agriculture crop maps, generated automatically using machine learning on multi-spectral satellite imagery.

The system gives weekly data about the yield of 26 crops across Punjab. We were making our maps freely available, which could be accessed by installing the machine-learning algorithms on your computer, he stated. He added that the digitalised data would help in market facilitation, stability in the market, cost price, direct issuance of interest-free loans to the small farmers by banks and subsidy without involving middle man while the other users such as government to formulate agriculture policy, insurance companies, agriculture departments and industry could benefit from the data gathered in real time.