System Developed To Improve Tobacco Crop Area

Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications has developed a Crop Estimation and Geographic Mapping System

ISLAMABAD, Aug 7 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 07th Aug, 2017 ) : Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications has developed a Crop Estimation and Geographic Mapping System (CEGMaS) to improve tobacco crop area both quantitative and qualitative estimation process.

CEGMaS is developed to use state-of-the-art technology tools to acquire up-to-date crop acreage estimates and quality pallets of tobacco crop in pilot regions of Shergarh (District Mardan) and Swabi - two of the most tobacco producing regions of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP).

CEGMaS uses high spatial resolution, Hyper-spectral satellite imagery of the pilot regions and use specifically developed computational tools to extract tobacco fields from the satellite imagery using the tobacco plant's spectral signatures.

National ICT R&D Fund, a department of the Ministry has provided Rs25.5 million funding for the project called Crop estimation and Geographic mapping system (CEGMaS). The Principal Investigator's Organization was University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar.

As per details of the project which is in completion process, the analysis process essentially differentiates among Flu Cured Virginia (FCV), Burley and Nicotiana Rustica (White Patta) tobacco species that are currently grown in Pakistan.

It is mentioned here that Pakistan is the 7th largest tobacco growing country in the world.

Tobacco is also one of the main cash crops for the farmers, cigarette manufacturing industries and to the government in the form of taxes.

Tobacco crop growing is regulated by the government through Pakistan Tobacco board so as to establish a measure of quantitative and qualitative estimates for the total yield. Qualitative and quantitative crop estimation is of significant importance for determining a viable costing model by the tobacco industries, fair-trade for the farmers and to the government for determining the basis for tax collection.

Inaccuracy in this process can have severe financial and policy implications for any company/Government agency. Higher degrees of human errors in measurements, recording and booking keeping makes the estimates practically useless.

The generally observed fact is that the total growth of tobacco crop is much higher than the estimated values. Growth of surplus tobacco crop beyond quantities required by the legal industry is not properly regulated because of the lack of accurate estimates.

The surplus crop ends up with counterfeiters, who are mainly running household industries evading government taxes and also in hands of smugglers, causing billions of rupees loss to national exchequer.