NECESSITY OF ROBOTIC ARM EXTENSION SPRINKLERS FOR UNMANNED AERIAL POLLINATION IN PHOENIX DACTILIFERA L

In the middle east, currently farmers pollinate date palm trees manually. They climb up each male palm tree to collects stamens and then climb every female palm to directly place one or more male clusters in the female flower. This combination is tied up with a light strip, which opens gradually with the growth of date. The process is extremely tedious, time-consuming, unsafe and accident-prone. In response to these concerns and as a part of mechanization in date-palm pollination process, automated pollination system using computer vision aerial vehicles that can be operated remotely by a single person from the ground, is being tried recently. An experimental study based on this technique is conducted in the orchards of Oman on three common cultivars namely, Al Khallas, Al Fard and Al Kash palms. The advantages and limitations of this unmanned aerial pollination technique are analyzed and the need of remotely operated extendable pollen sprinklers for improving the efficacy of the method is discussed in detai