Iran-Made Special Kit Capable of Cutting Cultivation Period to 7 Days

“We have designed a mechanism that increases productivity and decreases growing time notably,” said Mohammad-Mehdi Najjarnejad, the person in charge of sales and marketing in Barekat Aliabad Rastaq agro-industrial company.

The company, which is affiliated with Yazd branch of the Islamic Azad University, has also manufactured systems to set appropriate temperature, irrigation, and light conditions for plants, especially fodder, he added.

“In general, you need some three hectares of land to grow fodder and it will take 40 days to harvest fodder that has grown 20 centimeters, but by using the kits this will just take seven days from planting the seeds to harvesting the crops.”

He made the remarks on the sidelines of the Islamic Azad University's "second step of revolution" under the title of Asreh Omid Event which was held in Tehran's Mosalla from May 29 to June 01, 2022.

The event aimed to exhibit new achievements and products in the technological and innovation arenas in line with opening new windows towards strengthening the idea of creating ground for knowledge-based businesses at the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Islamic Azad University.

The multi-story hydroponic kit has a capacity to be set up in a space as small as 50 square meters, yielding one ton of fodder per day.

Another advantage of the system is that it is constantly disinfected with ozone, so it is completely free of infection elements such as aflatoxins and other poisonous carcinogens that are seen in animal husbandry farms.

As the country is situated in an arid area, food security may be endangered due to the dry climate, so we need a couple of projects that are reasonable and justifiable in terms of both productivity as well as water and energy saving, Najjarnejad explained.

This product can be a solution for major challenges of water shortage and food security which can be highly affected by political disputes all around the world, he concluded.

A total of 4,743 production knowledge-based companies have already been operating in the country and 2,569 new knowledge-based companies have so far been registered in the current Iranian calendar year which started on March 21.

It should be explained that knowledge-based companies have been categorized into two main divisions of production knowledge-based companies and new knowledge-based companies. This model of division has been developed based on activity, complexity and technological importance.

Energy Minister Ali-Akbar Mehrabian has said Iran experienced the driest water year over the past 52 years in the last year (March 2021-March 2022). According to the country's Drought Monitoring Center, during this period, all provinces had less than normal rainfall and severe to very severe drought prevailed in the country.

In Iran, 90 percent of water is used by the agricultural sector, 8 percent by households, and 2 percent by industries. In developed countries, this figure is 30 percent for the agricultural sector, 11 percent for households, and 59 percent for industries.

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