Agriculture drones arrive to combat locust

By Masood Sattar Khan
(Pakistan News & Features Services)

The Federal Minister for Science & Technology, Fawad Chaudhry, has continued taking up a number of innovations to make his presence felt in a big way. He has been keen in introducing modern gadgets for boosting efficiency.

He was credited to have introduced for the first time scientific calendar with precise dates of various Islamic events. 

When the country started confronting the COVID-19 pandemic and there was acute shortage of life saving ventilators, he stood up, took it up as a challenge and launched Made in Pakistan ventilators. 

As the country was passing through dual challenges of COVID-19 and locusts, he mobilized all his resources and succeeded in launching agriculture drones that could greatly help in stemming locust attacks which had challenged the country’s food security. 

Giving salient features of the state of the art Made in Pakistan drone made by a private entity on his directives, he said that the drone can carry 16 litres of pesticides and it can spray in 18 minutes to only the affected part of the agriculture land. 

Talking to media regarding his ministry's future plans, Fawad Chaudhry pointed out that he has formulated three, five and seven years plans as beyond that one couldn’t predict. 

This drone, he said, will be greatly helpful for small growers to safeguard their produce from insects and locusts and bring revolution in their life, pointing out that they will concentrate on three areas of chemicals, electronics and precision agriculture.