The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock (MAG) of El Salvador, through the General Directorate of Plant Health (DGSV), presented the Agricultural Intelligence Unit, whose objective will be to monitor the productive areas through multispectral images to determine the health of crops and intervene in areas with problems identified by technicians or reported by national producers.

This unit is the only one in Central America and to start with, it will have 13 drones available, three for surveillance and monitoring and 10 for intervention, preventive and reactive control.

The surveillance drones are DJI Phanton Pro RTK model, with a multispectral camera, which will be used for the surveillance and monitoring of water stress in crops and plantations; surveillance and monitoring of pests and diseases; surveillance and monitoring of crop conditions and projection of productivity; and monitoring of post-climatic events.

While those for intervention, preventive and reactive control are Agro Dron model (AG122), with a capacity of 20 liters. These can be used for the application of biological products and green strip in crops and plantations.

“Each agrodrone is capable of covering 4 blocks per flight; two drones can perform multiple flights with a capacity of 100 blocks and the capacity of a complete unit (10 drones) can cover up to 500 blocks per day ”, explained the Director of Plant Health, Iván Bethancourt.

This air vehicle will be handled by personnel trained and certified by Hylio USA and the service will be made available to medium and large agricultural producers in the country. The procedure and all the necessary information to request this new MAG service will be announced on our social networks and website.

“At the beginning of this year I promised that in MAG we would acquire technology for use in the agricultural sector, now it is a reality. We know that our producers must become more technical to facilitate their work and improve the performance of their crops. These agrodrones come to facilitate the hard work they do. Today they do have a government that cares about you, we are here to serve you, ”said the Minister of Agriculture, Pablo Salvador Anliker.

Likewise, the official explained that the advantages of using this technology are the speed of response, prediction of events, early detection of pests, reduction of exposure to agrochemicals and savings in the amount of inputs, thanks to the applicators, in addition, it will improve the distribution and coverage of applications.

In this sense, the use of this technology reduces risks to human health, since the producers will not have direct contact with the agrochemicals; Also, these equipments will allow to develop friendly agricultural activities with the environment, because the correct quantity will be placed and contamination problems will be avoided; In the economic sphere there will also be benefits, since the use of agrodrones has an efficiency of 90% compared to applications with a backpack sprinkler, whose effectiveness is 40%.

"The technological innovation of the future today is a reality. We must now think outside the traditional parameters in which we were trained as agricultural professionals, because drones came to stay and we must make the best of it, with more technical, scientific and technological criteria to when making decisions", said the Director of Plant Health.