Page 39 - AA 2024

Qatar

Qatar develops 45% more efficient irrigation system

for date palms

To increase date production and
reduce waste while drying, the
Ministry of Municipality represented
by Agricultural Research Department
has developed an advanced irrigation
system with a water efficiency rate of
up to 45 percent and a third generation
Polycarbonate Drying House (PDH) to
use in Qatar and other GCC countries.
The two research works were
conducted as part of “A Project to
Develop Sustainable Production
Systems for Date Palms in GCC
Countries” which is running under the
supervision of the International Center
for Agricultural Research in the Dry
Areas (ICARDA).
“Qatar is contributing in two ways
to the project. It developed water-
efficient irrigation systems like
subsurface drip irrigation, drip
irrigation and low-pressure irrigation technique by developing PDH of third The sector still faces many challenges
methods among others to reduce generation. The newly developed date in production, quality, and sustainable
water consumption,” said Director of drying technique has been shared with development, which requires efforts to
Agricultural Research Department at some date farms and plans are afoot to develop the productivity and quality of
the Ministry of Municipality Hamad provide this technique to other farms,” dates and solve problems to achieve
Saket Al Shammari. said Al Shammari. sustainable development of the date
He said that the Department To a question about the propagation sector and preserve the safety of the
also developed a third generation of palm trees in Qatar, he said that environment.
Polycarbonate Drying House (PDH) the Department is focusing on A total of 38 researchers and experts
which helped greatly in improving researching the best species of date in the field of palm trees and dates from
the quality of dates and reducing the palm for commercial purposes like Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi
waste while drying. Ikhlas, Barkhi, Khaniji, Shishi and Lulu Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
because of their high demand in the and several specialised professional
Al Shammari was speaking to The
Peninsula on the sidelines of a regional local market. organizations and centres, are
workshop on “Molecular Techniques “We researched such date palms participating in the workshop.
for Date Palm Propagation, On-Farm in the laboratories of the Agricultural The workshop aims to support
Crop Management and Post-Harvest Research Department in large training and transfer of developed
Treatments”. quantities to provide to local date technologies to raise the efficiency of
The five-day event is being farms at nominal prices,” said Al workers and researchers in the palm
organised by ICARDA for partners Shammari. and date sector in the technologies
from GCC countries to the Project In 2021, the six GCC countries developed by the “Project for
to Develop Sustainable Production produced 2.44 million tonnes of dates Developing Sustainable Date
Systems for Date Palms. “We reached on an area of 239,000 hectares, sharing Palm Production Systems in GCC”
an advanced stage in dry date over 18% of global date production. programme.
Arab Agriculture 2024 37