For the National Center for the Production of Laboratory Animals (Cenpalab) there is a concept that is key today in the economic and political conditions in which Cuba is developing: technological sovereignty.
According to Miguel Ángel Esquivel Pérez, head of the Department of Technological Surveillance at the institution, when the center was created, all the automatic equipment was going to be imported, and Commander-in-Chief Fidel Castro proposed to carry out a Cuban project, with his own automata.
An integrated project was made, with Cuban technology and know-how, and we have constantly renewed it. We own the technology, the designs are ours, he told Cubadebate. Esquivel Pérez affirmed that this gives them the potential to develop more things from an automaton; They work with free software, which is talked about a lot, but, in reality, not enough is done.
In numbers, Cenpalab’s workforce is more than 630 workers, including 168 university students (58 with doctoral and master’s degrees) and 252 medium technicians, many machinists, computer scientists and refrigeration engineers. There is a balance between the biological and the technological part that has led us to fields such as precision agriculture, clarified the head of the Technological Surveillance Department.
The center manufactures isolators with filters for animals in the gnotobiology area, where the gene bank is located, but also, maximizing the accumulated knowledge, they have advanced in the segment of solutions and products for the automation of agricultural processes. We have a platform, an automated real-time farm management system where each piece of equipment (tractor, harvester, irrigation system) is provided with a specific-purpose computer that we design and manufacture abroad, he said.
Esquivel Pérez explained that the computer monitors or automates processes on that equipment, it has a modem that transmits wirelessly through the network of the Cuban Telecommunications Company (ETECSA), the information is stored on a server and there are applications with the that, based on the data received, reports are made, analysis of time worked and other functions or, automatically, tasks such as management of the irrigation system or driving the tractor are carried out.
Also, the technology can be applied in specific systems or equipment, such as that which controls the depth of soil preparation. There is another in the fumigators or sprinklers, in Cítricos Jagüey Grande, equipped with a sonar that allows that where there are no plants, or in the change of furrow, the equipment does not spray, there a significant saving of the product is achieved and greater efficiency in that function, he specified.
He added that there are also the fertilizer that applies the exact dose of the product, regulated according to established parameters, and the seeder that ensures that the appropriate density is reached for greater productivity of a crop. Today, the system is deployed in the Mestre farm and also in the Jesús Rabí plant in Matanzas, and there are more than 100 precision agriculture equipment deployed, both tractors and irrigation systems.
Esquivel Pérez stressed that it will be extended to two other centrals, Héctor Rodríguez, in Villa Clara, and Ciro Redondo, in Ciego de Ávila; these and the Rabbi are the three sugar mills that today have bioelectric plants. Regarding other possibilities of expansion, he pointed out that there is a program and it is planned to implement this technology in some 15 companies in the main productive poles, including Mayarí, the three large rice companies (Los Palacios, Sur del Jíbaro and Fernando Echenique) and the large companies of various crops (La Cuba, Ceballos, Cubasoy, Valle del Yabú and Güira de Melena).
We generally work in intensive agricultural production systems supported by technology, and one of the fields is precision agriculture: achieving automation, the application of information and communication technologies in agriculture, he pointed out.
We cannot buy many of these platforms because they are generated in the United States and in European countries; the autoguiding system costs between $ 60,000 and $ 70,000; It is produced by Trimble in the United States. We have not been able to get any company to sell it to us.
He explained that if you have a tractor with GPS, it sends its location to the station, which detects any deviation. The tractor has a radio connection and the position is constantly corrected. The solution was to buy the chips, and nationally design the plates and others; It is not the same to buy the system, a technological package, than to buy components that are obviously not produced in Cuba, and then design and build your own.
This has several advantages, including economic and strategic technological sovereignty; the team is ours, highlighted the head of Cenpalab’s Technological Surveillance Department.
Source: ACN
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