The project Joint Experiment on Innovative Agriculture Monitoring based on Earth Observation and in situ data within BRICS Countries, submitted to a CNPq/BRICS call, has brought the Chinese researcher Miao Zhang, from the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth - Chinese Academy of Science, to Embrapa Soils on June 09. Zhang demonstrated some of the systems developed by the Chinese in the area of remote sensing in agriculture, like Crop Watch, which performs a global monitoring of agriculture; Drought Watch, which assesses droughts; ET Watch, which studies evapotranspiration; and Bio Watch, which monitors forest biomass. “While Crop Watch is updated every three months for 31 countries, including Brazil, the other systems are already available to be calibrated for other regions. Drought Watch, for instance, would be useful for the Semiarid Northeast in Brazil”, reports the Embrapa Soils researcher Margareth Simões. The Joint Experiment project also relies on partners in South Africa (University of Johannesburg), India (Indian Institutes of Technology) and Russia (Peoples' Friendship University of Russia Agro-Technological Institute). In Brazil, besides Embrapa, the National Institute for Space Research and the Rio de Janeiro State University are also participants. Next steps The work is going to comprehend land use dynamics and monitoring, agricultural monitoring, agricultural intensification and sustainable intensification related to integrated production systems. "We want to know which techniques are being researched in terms of satellite monitoring, so as to join efforts in these countries", Margareth observes. The scientist has a work agenda in mid-June that includes the FAO headquarters, in Rome, and Potsdam (Germany). Translation: Mariana Medeiros