English abstract
Artificial pollination of date palms has been practiced over thousands of years to improve the fruiting traits in date palms. Due to the changes in agricultural practices in the modern period, mechanical pollination techniques were tried in some parts of the world. But machine pollination of date palms has not gained popularity worldwide owing to economic, environmental, or technical challenges. Of late, agricultural drones were introduced to pollinate date palms in significantly less time and reduce the risk of injury, manpower, and cost. Modern drones can have integrated, built-in smart data-collecting devices to provide the farmers with all relevant information. Although this autonomous method provides a number of benefits in terms of labor and cost, pollination time, ease of use, etc, studies have not yet entirely evaluated the efficacy of drone pollination on date palms. This paper summarizes the outcomes of an autonomous drone pollination study performed during the 2022 season in the orchards of Oman. The pros and cons of this artificial aerial pollination method are examined in the paper. The impact of this method of pollination on crop yield, fruit quality, and fruit set percentage are analyzed. This study also explores the limitations of the autonomous drone pollination system and throws light on ways to improve its efficiency.
