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A new system to
help farmers avert dangers posed to their crops by frost and drought
will be made available for purchase in time for the winter season.
Under an agreement the Royal Scientific Society (RSS) signed with the
Ministry of Agriculture on June 10, 2005, RSS will manufacture and
design the
new system.
This proposed project would utilize mobile networks across the Kingdom
to issue early warnings to farmers on the danger of the frost or
drought. A monitoring project will be designed and manufactured to
measure temperatures and relative humidity. The components of the
project will include a temperature sensor, photovoltaic panel and other
mechanisms.
The unit, which will operate by solar power round-the-clock, will send
short messages (SMS) to the mobile phones of farm managers to warn of
impending drought or frost.
The unit will be programmed to issue an alert if temperatures drop below
3 degrees centigrade and stop alerting at 4 degrees centigrade. The unit
would also warn of impending drought by sending an SMS alert if the RH
drops below 30 per cent and stop alerting when the RH rises above 53 per
cent.
Last year, 12 similar devices, designed and manufactured by RSS, were
distributed free of charge to farmers in the Jordan Valley.
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