Ministry of Municipality Introduces Automated Grafting Technique for Vegetable Seedlings Production

Automated Grafting Technique for Vegetable Seedling

The Ministry of Municipality, represented by the Agricultural Research Department, has introduced, for the first time in Qatar, the technology of an automatic grafting machine, to produce grafted vegetable seedlings, as part of the implementation of projects to raise the sustainable productivity of vegetable crops to achieve food security.

This step comes as part of an agreement to adopt a social development program funded by the Japanese company, Mitsui Ltd., which is specialized in financing research projects. In this context, research was funded to raise the sustainable productivity of vegetable crops at an amount of half a million US dollars, knowing that the introduction of this technology is one of the ways to transfer technological means to the farmer community, with the aim of conducting experiments and producing grafted seedlings to treat production problems resulting from the Qatari environmental conditions.

The Director of the Agricultural Research Department at the Ministry of Municipality Hamad Saket Al-Shammari, stressed that the fruitful cooperation between the Ministry represented by the Agricultural Research Department and Mitsui Co., Ltd. greatly contributed to the implementation of a number of research experiments, and led to results and recommendations being presented to farmers and those interested in agriculture, to serve them, and the agricultural sector as a whole.

He pointed out that the introduction of modern technologies, including the use of an automatic vaccination machine, is a priority in this program, and comes within the framework of developing vegetable production techniques, and said that the vaccination process will be conducted mainly for some important vegetable crops for the state's food security system, such as tomatoes, eggplant and some cucurbit crops.

In the same context, Dr. Al-Sayed Al-Azzazi, an expert on genetic resources in the Agricultural Research Department and supervisor of research experiments funded by the aforementioned company, said that the automatic grafting machine for vegetable seedlings has a production capacity of 800 seedlings per hour, which would reduce dependence on labor for the production of grafted seedlings, and dissemination of this technology and method of cultivation to farmers.

Source: QNA