The minister of Agriculture, Livestock, Aquaculture, and Fishery of Ecuador, Javier Ponce Cevallos, is in Brazil to learn more about technologies in several areas and discuss possible partnerships that are of interest to agriculture in his country. On Tuesday (November 17), he is going to visit Embrapa Instrumentation and Embrapa Southeast Livestock, in São Carlos, SP.

The visit takes place upon an invitation from the researcher and former president of Embrapa Silvio Crestana, who participates in the scientific consulting council of Ecuador's National Agricultural Research Institute (Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones Agropecuarias - INIAP).

At Embrapa Instrumentation, the minister and his advisor Mariuxi Lorena Gomez Torres will be welcomed by the head of the unit, João de Mendonça Naime, who is going to make a presentation about the research center, followed by a lecture on basic sanitation in rural areas, to be delivered by the deputy head of Research and Development (R&D), Wilson Tadeu Lopes da Silva, and by the researcher Lúcio de André de Castro's presentation on image processing software and the use of drones in agriculture.

The visitors will also learn more about low-cost irrigation sensors developed by the researcher Adonai Calbo, which are already available in the market through licensed companies; about aerial spray systems from a national project coordinated by the researcher Paulo Cruvinel; and about tomographic techniques used in agriculture, which will be presented by the researcher Carlos Vaz.

In the early afternoon, the researcher Ricardo Inamasu, leader of the portfolio of projects on Agricultural Automation, will show them studies based on the National Precision Agriculture Reference Lab (Laboratório de Referência Nacional de Agricultura de Precisão - Lanapre). From 3p.m. to 6p.m., they are going to visit Embrapa Southeast Livestock. On Monday (November 16), the minister and the advisor visited Embrapa Satellite Monitoring in Campinas, SP.

On Wednesday the 18th, the visit will head to the Luiz de Queiroz College of Agriculture, where the advisor Mariuxi Lorena Gomez Torres concluded her master's degree in Entomology, in 2005, and to a sugar and ethanol plant as well.