Sri Lanka to count number of coconut trees using drone technology

The Plantation Industries Ministry together with the Coconut Cultivation Board (CCB) plan to employ the application of drone technology and an online coconut land registration to boost productivity and yield of the coconut plantation in the country.

Plantation Industries Minister Navin Dissanayake recently inaugurated the CCB’S initiative to monitor and to collect data of coconut plantation across the country using drones.

Dissanayake said the occasion marked the first step towards promoting high-tech in coconut plantation, which is expected to boost the productivity and yield.

Speaking to Mirror Business, CCB Chairman Kapila Yakandawala said that these drone units will capture high resolution images to carry out land surveys as well as to calculate the number of coconut trees in the country.

“We will set up drone units in the coconut triangle, Northern Province, Southern Province and in the head office of CCB,” he stressed.

Yakandawala revealed that CCB also plans to bring down advanced drones to spray fertiliser and chemicals for coconut plantations in the near future.

Moreover, CCB has already developed a mobile land registration application for the coconut cultivation and the app will be launched on Google Play Store within 2-3 weeks.

“At the moment, we don’t have a database to register coconut lands. The app will be particularly useful in monitoring after care services. Once we register the land on the app, we can allocate a point on Google Maps for the coconut estate and we can give them a registration number,” he said.

CCB is planning to carry out an advertising campaign to promote the mobile app among coconut estate owners to download it once the app is launched on Google Store.

Speaking of the five-year programme to promote coconut cultivation in the Northern Province, Yakandawala said that CCB has already planted coconut plants in 40,000 acres while plans are underway to plant another 40,000 acres in the province.

In addition, CCB plans to rehabilitate 40,000 acres of coconut plantation lands in the province.

The minister said that Sri Lanka would reach 2900 million coconut nuts this year in line with the Coconut Research Institute forecast.