Adoption of New Engineering Systems for Base Maps Production and Crop Monitoring, Case study: Kenana Sugar Cane Corp.

Abstract

Sugar cane is one of the most agricultural crops in terms of economic returns. In addition to sugar production enjoyed many products such as molasses and its derivatives as well as feed and paper and cardboard industry. In Sudan, due to the integration of many factors, such as appropriate climate, fertile soils, labour and reasonable infrastructures, sugar production started in 1962. Kenana Sugar Estate, situated in the Sudan, is considered to be one of the largest single estates in the world covering an area of 94,000 feddans (39,500 hectares). The Estate is situated 300 Km south of Khartoum. Geographically, it is located at latitude 13 degrees north and longitude and 30 degree, east. Although the use of Geographic Information System (GIS) in sustainable development has been demonstrated, its utility for on-farm management has not yet been well appreciated in Sudan. This is particularly necessary since sustainable development can only be realized with the farmers’ participation. Development of integrated crop yield models using GIS as well as soil and water related parameters is necessary. The main objective of this project is to produce Digital Base Maps for different layers for Kenana Sugar Company using Satellite imagery, Global positioning System (GPS) and GIS technology and linking it with related database, will help planners, decision makers and managers at all levels to manage diagnoses the exiting problems and find the solution in relatively short time with minimum cost and efforts through the use of GIS capabilities. GIS can provide farm managers with an effective method to visualize, manipulate, analyze and display spatial data, providing the backbone of a Precision Agriculture (PA) system. The RTK GPS Leica 520 was used to collect the coordinates’ reading from the field, total of eleven points distributed through the estate area were collected. These points can be used as base for any application inside the field. To create the features data for the study area, high resolution satellite image from IKONOS Satellite of one meter spatial resolution with three bands was used. The resolution of satellite images has improved considerably. As images are now available in the range of 1-5 m, remote sensing is increasingly being used in studies of sugar cane precision farming. The GIS and GPS have already become standard tools for building spatial databases and for geo-referencing fields and other spatial features. crop monitoring used to follow the crop status, different types of satellite images to detect the crop assessment and the situation inside the fields.