An Iranian knowledge-based company, Rah Rooyesh Raad, has developed new agricultural technology solutions to expand the horizons of conventional farming.
Early this week, the firm introduced two innovative products, namely a plant factory and a smart miniature greenhouse, ISNA reported.
According to Elaheh Akbarnejad, CEO of Rooyesh, the plant factory, which is a smart portable greenhouse, utilizes the internet of things and vertical farming technologies to deliver crops.
“The product is a two-square meter greenhouse, designed in three stories and six separate culture trays. The space can hold up to 4,000 seedlings,” she said.
“Biosensors embedded in the trays help grow plants in the greenhouse. Temperature, moisture, light and most importantly, Co2 concentration sensors, work together to provide a complete photosynthesis for the plants.”
The greenhouse is equipped with fully automated growth lighting, ventilation, cooling and irrigation systems, which work based on the biodata harvested from sensors.
According to Akbarnejad, the system can support a plant from seed to crop stage with no human monitoring.
However, biosensors deliver their data to an online platform, allowing an operator to interfere in the system’s smart schedule whenever needed.
Pointing to the fact that the plant factory can be built in a variety of sizes and shapes, Akbarnejad said it can be used as a small farmland for households or feed vegetable isles with fresh products in supermarkets.
The system can also be extended to the domestic agricultural sector, helping greenhouses curb their energy consumption.
The company’s second product is a smart small-scale greenhouse, especially designed for household use.
The product uses hydroponic technology that is efficient and hardly messy.
Hydroponics is a branch of hydroculture that involves growing plants in an aqueous solvent without the use of soil. Its technology allows terrestrial plants to grow with only their roots subjected to the nutrient liquid, or with the roots supported by an inert medium such as perlite, gravel, or other substrates.
Akbarnejad said fish excrement, duck manure and chemical fertilizers are some of the sources of nutrients used in the hydroponic system.
Pesticides are not used in hydroponic farming and soil contamination does not pose a problem. Water circulates through the plants during the process and reduces water consumption and the cost of farming, she added.
The hydroponic technology uses far less water to grow crops, and farmers in harsh environments with limited access to water can upgrade their practices and make more profit by using these systems.
Iran is facing serious water challenges, as precipitation is declining to hitherto unseen levels, water consumption is rising and water mismanagement is continuing.
According to scientific evidence, traditional farming methods need 400 liters of water to grow 1 kilogram of tomatoes, while hydroponics requires 70 liters.
Agritech Projects Planned
Iran’s Vice Presidential Office for Science and Technology has planned several agricultural technology (agritech) development projects to help promote a sustainable and more profitable farming industry.
According to the office’s biotechnology division, four agritech projects with an added value of 5 trillion rials ($19.3 million) will soon be implemented in the sector.
Integrated Plant Nutrient Management is a five-year project, which is already being studied by knowledge-based companies.
The project embraces soil, nutrient, water, crop and vegetation management practices, customized to a particular cropping and farming system.
Aimed at improving soil fertility and productivity, the project will also help reduce environmental degradation. It also aims to optimize the soil condition, including its physical, chemical, biological and hydrological properties, to boost farm productivity and minimize land degradation, the report said.
The second initiative, a contract farming pilot project, is in the works for cultivating wheat, garlic, onion, tomatoes and oilseeds.
Contract farming is conducted based on an agreement between buyers and farmers, which creates conditions for the production and marketing of a farm product or products.
Typically, the contractee agrees to supply an agreed quantity of a particular agricultural product.
The project has a five-year timeline and the potential to create numerous jobs.
The third initiative, known as Integrated Pest Management, is an ecological project for controlling pests.
IPM combines the use of biological, cultural and chemical practices to control insect pests in agricultural production. It seeks to use natural predators or parasites to control pests, using selective pesticides for backup only when pests are not controlled by natural means.
According to the vice presidential office, several knowledge-based companies and tech teams are now working on the project's details to make it operational.
Extraterritorial cultivation is the next project, which envisages renting farmlands in other countries for agricultural production and importing the crops.
Iran is planning to produce maize and other grains through a five-year extraterritorial project.
For water and soil-stressed countries like Iran, the approach is expected to improve food security while also increasing production.
According to industry insiders, large tracts of Iranian landmass are semi-arid and conventional agriculture pile pressure on natural resources like soil and water.
The vice presidential office’s efforts are aimed at lifting this pressure and incorporating modern technologies into the sector.
Nanotech Solutions
Environmentalists, academics and economic experts are urging authorities and farmers to embrace nanotechnology for modernizing the agro sector and curbing water use.
Alireza Allafchian, deputy director of Nanotech Research Center at Isfahan University of Technology, says the efficient management of surface water can have a positive impact on the key farming sector.
“Nanotech water treatment systems store and purify surface waters and reduce evaporation,” he said.
In such systems, nanomembranes are used to soften the water and remove physical, biological and chemical contaminants.
Allafchian noted that nanomaterial has an internal structure or surface structure in the nanoscale with a length ranging approximately from 1 nm to 100 nm.
Nanotechnology increases crop productivity and minimizes pesticide application by using nanoparticle-mediated gene or DNA transfer in plants.
“Genetic modification of crops, reduction of agricultural waste and higher yields with the use of nano-biocompatible materials are some of the benefits of nanotechnology,” he said.
Nanotech’s contribution to farming includes the use of nano-formulations of chemicals for developing pesticides and fertilizers, nanosensors for crop protection, identification of diseases and chemical residues, employment of nano-devices for genetic engineering of plants and improvement of postharvest management.
