The National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) has developed a system that uses remote sensing for monitoring rice growth to support the development of agriculture in Indonesia.

“Monitoring has been conducted with Terra/Aqua MODIS data to monitor rice growth for eight days and with Sentinel-1 data for 15 days,” BRIN researcher Rokhis Komaruddin informed in a statement issued on Tuesday.

The rice monitoring system has been implemented within the Agriculture Ministry with the name Siscrop 2.0, he informed.

Through Siscrop, users can monitor rice growth data starting from the provincial to sub-district levels.

Due to the success of the rice planting monitoring program, BRIN’s researchers, led by Komaruddin and another researcher, Rizatus Shofiyati, have received the APRSAF Space Achievement Award from the Asia-Pacific Regional Space Agency Forum (APRSAF) in 2022.

The award was conferred for their contribution to supporting the APRSAF program. Rice planting monitoring is one of the successful activities under the Space Application For Environment (SAFE) initiative in Indonesia.

“The success of this program is also inseparable from the support of BRIN, the Agriculture Ministry, JAXA, and Tokyo University,” Komaruddin said.

Rice crop growth monitoring is crucial for determining crop development. The monitoring can also help predict potential disruptions such as floods, droughts, and disease pests, he informed.

The system is currently one of the considerations for stakeholders from related institutions in routine monitoring of rice growth to make agriculture a success, he said.

This does not rule out the possibility that private companies such as insurance companies or fertilizer producers could also utilize the system, he informed.

This is because there is information regarding production capacity projection and fertilizer needs estimation, he said.

“In the future, we plan to improve this program, especially in terms of accuracy and information delivery,” he added.

Source: Antara News