Information for fruit and vegetables business in CIS
'Smart Greenhouse' project developed by Azerbaijani students
Students of the Azerbaijan State University of Oil and Industry have developed a 'smart greenhouse' that surpasses foreign analogues in terms of functionality.
Rusif Huseynov, a source close to the project, said that the project provides for the full automation of the process of growing vegetables in a green house.
“The students created an easy-to-use and reliable system, with good performance. Today, Azerbaijani entrepreneurs import such solutions from Germany and the Netherlands. The solution developed by our students is in no way inferior to, and in many ways even exceeds the functionality of foreign analogues. Unfortunately, local developers are the most difficult to promote their solutions in the domestic market. We intend to present the ‘smart greenhouse’ project to the Ministry of Agriculture,” he said, Trend reports.
‘Smart Greenhouse’ allows to automatically control the climate in the greenhouses, so that weather changes do not have a negative impact on plants. This solution also contributes to reducing costs when growing agricultural products, saving energy, minimizing the impact of the human factor, etc.
Azerbaijan has three major greenhouse vegetable production areas: the western part of the country (mainly Ganja and Shamkir regions); the central region (mainly Absheron peninsula); and the southern region Lankaran and Astara area. Of this area, which is approximately 280 hectares, about 20 percent are antiquated Soviet style greenhouses. Many of these are currently being updated and repaired by their owners.
Additionally, new structures of Israeli, Dutch, Turkish and Italian companies have been built or are in the planning stages of construction.
Furthermore, about 30 percent of these greenhouses are home built polyethylene covered greenhouses with mixed wooden and steel frame materials.
Regardless of geographic location, the majority of greenhouse cultivation systems in Azerbaijan, consist of fundamental climate control components. Additionally, they can provide a greater or lesser amount of climate control, and subsequent plant growth and productivity depending on their design and complexity.
It should be noted that recently, President IIham Aliyev, opened a new greenhouse in Baku Agropark, which covers 11 hectares areas for cultivation of tomatoes.
The first phase of this tomato greenhouse project in Azerbaijan was started by the Dutch greenhouse construction company, Debets Schalke on December 2016. Last July, this project was completed and the cultivation started.