Jakarta, Indonesia Sentinel – The Ministry of Agriculture (MOA) continues to monitor cropping conditions and harvest areas using satellite imagery. The method is the Standing Crop Information System (SISCrop) to calculate conditions in real time.
Head of the Center for Research and Development of Agricultural Land Resources of the Agency for Standardization of Agricultural Instruments (BSIP Kementan), Husnain, explained that the working system of satellite imagery is able to communicate conditions in the field with a combination of optical and star models that penetrate clouds using radar sensors.
“Then in 2020 we started to build SAR (synthetic aperture radar) that can penetrate clouds and is not affected by taking images during the day or night. And in 2021 we have added a rice provitas feature,” said Husnain, Friday (30/12/2022).
Husnain said that the satellite images that operate can rotate around the earth very well so that the information obtained is complete information. As an illustration, this system has photographed the condition of paddy crops in Karawang Regency, Indramayu and even outside Java Island.
“And every 16th or no later than the 2nd of every month the data is updated. For example, for the blue color, it turns out that it is stilling, the light green color is the vegetative period 1 so the soil is covered by plants, then the more intense green vegetative 2, then starts yellowing generative 1 and intense yellow generative 2, after which it is harvested and the soil is empty, we display it in the form of various colors, “he said.
As for the sentinel 1 satellite that is used as the basis of the standing crop 2.0 information system, the ministry has used a SAR sensor that is free from cloud cover and is not constrained by the retrieval time so that the portrait results are in good condition.
“The combat resolution is 10 to 15 days. So we update after 15 days it is real time, then the spatial resolution is 10 meters so 1 pixel represents 10×10. What we get from SIS Crop is the first standing crop monitor, which we divide into 6 phases,” he said.
From this phase, Husnain said, the main harvest period is predicted to take place in February, March and April so that there are no worries about the condition of national rice for the next few months.
“We at the Ministry of Agriculture are responsible for providing food for 270 million people. Moreover, we need to have real time data and efforts to increase productivity. We also carry out calculations through several stages. Including all stages carried out by BPS regarding semple ubinan. What is certain is that the data we refer to still uses BPS data. But the Ministry of Agriculture as a technical ministry must have real-time information, especially in information on production needs,” he explained. (InfoPublik / Photo: Special)
