Minya, Egypt - The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in cooperation with the Ministry of Water Resources and Irrigation (MWRI) and the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (MALR), implemented the second phase of the agricultural crop mapping training to 22 Engineers from the two ministries on the basics of crop mapping using remote sensing, as part of these authorities’ efforts to make the use of water in agriculture more efficient, productive and environmentally friendly, in addition to supporting Egypt's capabilities in adopting scientific and modern methods and standards in water accounting.

Mapping agricultural crops using satellites is considered as one of the most important and useful methods for water accounting and assessment of water productivity. The training covered the use of remote sensing, geographic information systems, data collection, and image classification.

This training, which was implemented for the first time in the city of Tanta in April 2021 to 90 irrigation and agricultural engineers from the three governorates, was repeated at the request of the two ministries with the objective of ensuring a higher level of training quality and enabling trainees to carry out the operations required in this framework and be able to train other workers in these sectors.

In the second and final phase of the five-day training in Al-Minya governorate, 22 engineers from the two ministries from Al-Minya, Sharkia and Kafr El-Sheikh governorates, trained on how to map crop structures using satellites, with the aim of determining the exact water needs of agricultural crops and maximizing the use of every drop of water. The training included methods of crop mapping combinations using satellites, identified the exact water needs of agricultural crops, and the method of maximizing the utilization of each drop of water.

"There is a need to generalize these modern scientific methods in the rest of the Egyptian governorates to contribute to a major change in the use of water for agricultural purposes." Said Nasredin Haj El-Amin, FAO Representative in Egypt.

Sessions to support boosting crop combinations using satellites images activities were implemented in the command areas of 54 thousand feddan in Al-Minya governorate, 58 thousand feddan in Kafr El-Sheikh governorate and 147 thousand Feddan in Sharkia governorate. Additionally, crop combinations have been boosted in the three governorates for the previous five seasons during both winter and summer seasons.

This activity is implemented under the regional project “Implementing the 2030 Agenda for water efficiency/productivity and water sustainability in NENA countries”, under FAO’s Water Scarcity Regional Initiative, which aims to support Egypt and a number of countries in the NENA region to develop strategic plans for managing and distributing water resources in a sustainable manner. This project is funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency.