Agriculture knowledge

Research Group Awarded a Grant of 900,000 NIS to develop an IT center for Agriculture

The new center aims to identify and characterize computer services featuring

A group of researchers from the Ben Gurion University of the Negev and additional academic institutions led by Dr. Amots Hetzroni of the Agricultural Research Organization has been awarded a grant of 900 thousand shekels over a period of three years from the Ministry of Agriculture to set up and develop an information center for information technologies.

The new center aims to identify and characterize computer services featuring a wide and extensive range of agricultural information, to map out the current situation and guide the project’s initial test-run, while presenting a proposed model for expanding activities in this field.
Apart from the researchers at the Ben-Gurion University – Dr. Gilad Ravid, Dr. Lior Fink and Dr. Adir Even, from the Department of Industrial Engineering Management, the Agricultural Research Organization, Bar Ilan University, the Israeli Institute for Policy on Science,Technology and Innovation, and Agam, Advanced Agronomy are also partners in this project.
Dr. Ravid who heads the Ben-Gurion University team noted that the agricultural industry has adopted the information revolution only partially.
He continued by recognizing that a gap exists between awareness and the available information applications in almost all agricultural production fields on the one hand and the slow rate of progress in adapting and assimilating information technologies on the other hand.

The creation of information and making it accessible conforms to the mandate and the objectives of the Ministry of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Organization and the research universities in Israel. Dr. Ravid emphasizes that systems for sharing information and knowledge were usually developed by defining the details and demands to produce a comprehensive system (bottom-up model).

Here the work aims to plan the broader concept (Top-down model), so that the overall systems should draw their potential from those same common design rules. Ultimately, the intention here is to create the basis for a center that can continue to function independently after the project has been completed and also play a part in new activities, initiatives and research work.

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