Israel Agricultural Research Organization: Volcani center (2) :

Growing Fruits and Vegetables, Maintenance and Pest control Techniques

As early as the 1980s, Israeli drip irrigation technology began to be introduced to China.Drip irrigation, which originated in Israel, is now ubiquitous in the country.Whether it is ten thousand acres of farms or campus landscape crops, you can see large and small drip irrigation pipes.

Thanks to its agricultural technology, With only 20% of the country's arable land, Israel is now Europe's second-largest importer of fruit and vegetables. 

The Volcani centre and its affiliates now have more than 200 PhD scientists, 400 engineering and technical assistants, more than 300 graduate students and 60 visiting postdocs, representing more than 70% of Israel's agricultural research team, spread over four sites with very different climates.

By the end of 2019, more than 5,000 crop varieties and agricultural technology patents had been developed by the Volcani centre and the start-ups it incubates, making an outstanding contribution to the development of agricultural technology not only in Israel but around the world.

In 2017, Volcani was awarded a UNESCO life Sciences Research Prize for its work in dry agriculture.

Today we are going to talk about the Volcani centre's cutting-edge technology in growing and processing of crops and vegetables.

Fruit and vegetable planting

Planting and harvesting techniques developed by the Volcani Centre have increased the yield of olives by five times, and the equipment can be used to harvest other fruit, saving farmers the cost of their equipment.The combination of planting agronomy and harvesting machinery helped to transform Israel's agricultural system.

Among the thousands of fruit and vegetable varieties grown by the Volcani centre are the cherry tomato, which is well known to Chinese consumers, as well as many other high-yield varieties that are sweet and juicy.

A program with Meloni, for example, to produce high-sweetness seedless melons, can increase yields per hectare by 50-70%.

The bright red Omer mango not only has large and sweet fruit, but also has a short planting period, high yield and a longer shelf life.

Other premium varieties include pomegranates, which have a shorter planting period, increased yields, a bright red and high sweetness, and Yasmin & Rocky, considered the best quality strawberry variety in Israel.

Postharvest and preservation

Due to the shortage of agricultural population, the automation of agriculture in Israel is high.The automated sorter, developed by Volcani and Eshet Eilon, automatically grades fruits and vegetables by weight and sight, and uses near-infrared (NIR) technology to  detect a variety of organic components inside.This set of equipment has been widely used in the food industry, for date, apple, avocado, mango, pineapple, garlic and other automatic sorting classification.

The preservation of fruits and vegetables and food has always been a technical problem in agriculture. The loss of global food output in transportation is reported as high as 30-50%.The Volcani centre also has a range of technologies in the field of fresh fruit, vegetables and food packaging, such as the use of concentrated mint sprays as preservatives, the use of airtight packaging for fresh fruit and vegetables, and new edible packaging materials.

Disease Control and Greenhouse Management

The Volcani centre also has innovative technology for pest control. For example, the cultivation of special varieties of wasps to control insect pests, and edible oil pesticides for pepper, tomato, eggplant, cucumber, zucchini herbs, strawberries, flowers and other crops.

Crop protection and disease monitoring is an important part of digital agriculture.Using technologies such as Lidar, infrared light and drones, farmers can monitor disease and pests at any time.

Through research on how sunlight affectsdifferent factors in grennhouse after through different colored nets, such as light, temperature, humidity, air conditioning, the protection of soil, etc., as well as the use of the net against pests, protection of natural disasters, Volcani center's net products has been used on plant growth control in greenhouse, and commercialization for many years.

With the blessing of high technology, Israel developed into an agricultural power under the condition of congenital lack of agricultural conditions.