Egypt’s Minister of Agriculture and Land Reclamation El Sayyed El Quseir on Tuesday 8/8/2023 inaugurated a laboratory for soil fertility and inspected a remote-sensing unit at the Soil and Water research Institute (SWRI).
The minister was accompanied by Head of the Agricultural Research Center (ARC) Mohamed Suleiman.
The minister was briefed on mechanisms of work at the laboratory and its affiliate departments and services.
The lab has already done tests on land fertility in the governorates of Qena, Beheir, Kafr El Sheikh, Ismailia and Damietta.
The laboratory determines the degree of soil fertility, production capacity, irrigation measurement and drinking water and also detects the high concentrations of nitrogen in agricultural products which lead to contamination of the products and serious diseases.
He said establishing the laboratory comes in implementation of President Abdel Fattah El Sisi’s directives to expand in the use of modern technologies in agriculture along with expanding the digital transformation of all agricultural researches and quality control in a bid to decrease costs and increase land productivity.
The minister also inspected the remote-sensing unit at the ARC which works on assessing the areas cultivated with rice through satellites. He also ordered expansion in the cultivating of four strategic crops; rice, corn, cotton and wheat in order to provide accurate data for decision-makers with the aim of achieving food security for citizens.
Source: State Information Service Egypt