As part of the implementation of projects to raise the sustainable productivity of vegetable crops to achieve food security, 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. 

This step is part of a deal to implement a social development program supported by Mitsui Ltd., a Japanese firm that specializes in funding research projects. In this context, a half-million-dollar research project was funded to increase the sustainable productivity of vegetable crops, knowing that introducing this technology is one of the ways to transfer technological means to the farmer community, with the goal of conducting experiments and producing grafted seedlings to treat production problems caused by Qatari environmental conditions.

For the first time in Qatar, the #MinistryOfMunicipality represented by the Agricultural Research Department, has introduced the technology of automatic grafting machines, to produce grafted vegetable seedlings pic.twitter.com/r6ahMGuKP0

— وزارة البلدية | Ministry Of Municipality (@albaladiya) February 17, 2022

Hamad Saket Al-Shammari, Director of the Ministry of Municipality's Agricultural Research Department, stressed that the Ministry's Agricultural Research Department's fruitful cooperation with 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 noted that introducing modern technologies, such as the use of an automatic vaccination machine, is a priority in this program, and that it falls under the umbrella of developing vegetable production techniques, and that the vaccination process will be carried out primarily for some important vegetable crops for the state's food security system, such as tomatoes, eggplant, and some cucurbit crops, among others. 

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 reliance on labor for grafted seedling production and dissemination of this technology and method of cultivation to farmers.

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Source credit: Qatar News Agency

Image credit: Gulf Times