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   ‘Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink’ - or so says Coleridge’s famous poem ‘The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner’. Water makes up over 90 per cent of the human body and covers seven tenths of the world’s surface, and yet just three per cent of the world’s reserves is fresh water which can be used for drinking.  The other 97 per cent is saline (salty) whose potential as a means of sustaining life has largely been neglected, unless it has been through the costly and energy consuming process of desalination first.

   But with reserves of fresh water in decline and populations increasing, scientists in areas where fresh water is most scarce are turning to salt water as a means of irrigating plants which produce the food and animal fodder that are essential for survival.

   The Middle East , and especially the Gulf, has one of the most extreme climates in the world. Agricultural production is hampered by the arid landscape, lack of fresh water and high temperatures, which is why the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture was established in Dubai to develop and promote the use of sustainable agricultural systems that use salt water to grow crops.

   Located 23km from the city centre on the Al Ain Road in Al Ruwayyah, the state-of-the-art facility is not your typical farm. It comprises modern offices and laboratories, air-conditioned greenhouses, and set in 100 hectares of land where thousands of plants are undergoing experiments using computer controlled irrigation systems, which allow precise control over the amount and salinity of water applied.  

   Director of Technical Programs, Professor Faisal Taha explained: “The idea of the centre goes back to 1990 when the Islamic Development Bank in Jeddah convened an international conference in Al Ain to look at what role saline water can play in increasing agricultural production in the Gulf countries, and the region as a whole. Following the conference, they found merit in establishing a centre to look into the use of saline water to produce food and feed.”

   From small acorns, oak trees grow and an agreement was signed in 1996 for the UAE to host the centre. The Islamic Development Bank allocated $18 million for its construction and to cover operating costs for 10 years. The Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development in Kuwait donated a further $1m, as did the OPEC Fund, and the centre began operations in September 1999 under its Director General, Dr Mohammad Al-Attar.

   “The mission of the centre as a whole is to demonstrate the value of saline water for producing forages, field crops, trees, ornamental plants and vegetables in a way that is economically and environmentally feasible so farmers get money while ensuring the addition of this salt water doesn’t harm the environment,” Prof. Taha said. “We have to ensure that there is value for both the farmer and the environment.”

   Most of the ground water used for agriculture in the Gulf has a salt content which varies from 3,000 to 10,000 parts per million, but some goes up to 15-20,000 parts per million. The centre is mainly experimenting with water ranging from 4,000-23,000 parts per million, the upper limit being approximately half the concentration of sea water.

   “The water being used for agricultural production in the UAE at the moment is the less saline water of about 3,000-4,000 parts per million which is also used for irrigating gardens, streets, highways and some homes. It comes from the ground, mainly from wells, and in some areas of Dubai is about 20 or 30 feet down.

   “There is no charge for this water and so it is being overused. The problem is that the more that you use that water and the more it mixes, the saltier it gets, but you can delay the salination of the water by using irrigation systems and crops which take more saline water.

   “Unfortunately, in many cases you have the mentality that ‘if I use more water and irrigate more, then the crops will be better’, but at the same time, as we have shown in many experiments here, you can get the same results using just one third of the water. There is a lot of water wastage in Dubai , the UAE and the Gulf as a whole, because the public is not aware of what is happening to the water resources or how saline this water is becoming as it is pumped more and more.”

   The main area of the centre’s initial research involves growing forage crops for use as animal feeds. Traditionally alfalfa and rhodes grass have been grown in the UAE for fodder, but both are inefficient plants which consume large amounts of water. The centre is therefore working to evaluate the potential of other crops with similar forage values, which don’t require the same amount, or quality, of water.

   “We are looking at grasses mainly, legumes, shrubs and some local trees,” Prof. Taha said. “Each of these categories contains thousands of plants and our big challenge is to find the ones from each group which are most suited to saline water and, more importantly, the very hot environment - they have to take the salt and the heat.”

   The job of finding the plants is the responsibility of Plant Genetic Resources Scientist Abdullah Jardat who has spent the past two and a half years collecting seeds from around the world which either like salt or can tolerate it, growing them to harvest more seeds and building up a gene bank.

   “Without these plants the work of the centre would just be theoretical,” he said. “Agriculture in this part of the world consumes up to 85-90 per cent of the fresh water resources and productivity is not high. Fresh water is limited, but the available resources are saline water and marginal land, so unless we have plants which can take the water and survive the harsh conditions, we can’t produce anything or utilise these resources.”

   Dr Jardat, who prefers to be called a farmer rather than a scientist, said salt tolerant plants have been neglected for thousands of years despite their suitability to the region.

   “If you look at a map of the Middle East and compare the shorelines to the land mass, the Middle East has the highest ratio compared with the rest of the world. This is why the natural environment encourages the development and natural selection of salt tolerant plants.

   “But unfortunately they were neglected because farmers, say 10,000 years ago, in Mesopotamia and the old civilisations selected against salt. They wanted more productive crops, which could utilise the fresh waters of the Euphrates , the Tigris , the River Jordan and rainfall, which are fresh water, but salinity eventually struck them and resulted in the collapse of empires.

   “They weren’t able to manage salinity from an engineering point of view, but they managed it from a genetics point of view. They replaced wheat, which is salt sensitive, with barley, which is salt tolerant, and in their mythology barley is seen as a divine crop given by the Gods because it can withstand the salt.

   “Two thirds of what I have planted here this year was barley from a salt-affected area of Oman . It germinated with water of two thirds sea water strength and I expect it to do much better with further selection.”

   Other crops, which Dr Jardat has introduced at the centre, with a view to diversifying the plants grown in the farming systems in the region, include oil crops such as safflowers and the Mexican jojoba shrub, which produces oils used in heavy industry and cosmetics, particularly shampoos.

   “Jojoba has a very promising future in this part of the world. It is a drought tolerant, salt tolerant evergreen that produces thick foliage, which can be very nutritious. Hopefully it will be a very good addition and can utilise marginal land and salt water.”

   But the most important plant for Dr Jardat is the date palm, whose succulent fruits he describes as ‘candy.’

   “In simple terms, what we are trying to do here is grow candy on trees using saline water,” he said with a smile. “The date palm originated in this part of the world and has its roots in the culture, as well as the land of Mesopotamia and parts of the Arabian Peninsula .

   “The Ministry of Agriculture has provided us with the top 10 varieties in the UAE and we are testing them under different saline water treatments to find the threshold of salinity where the quality and quantity of dates is acceptable. Date palms need a huge amount of water so if we can replace part of the fresh water with saline water to the point where quality and yield are not adversely affected, that will be a huge saving for the country and the region - it all boils down to the preciousness of fresh water.”

   As well as plants that can tolerate salt, the centre is also working with ones that have a taste for it and need it - known as halophytes - of which there are around 2,600 species world-wide. They have generally been regarded as wild crops, but many have now been domesticated and found to have uses ranging from food and fodder to producing industrial oils - and, most importantly, thrive in water ranging from half sea strength to sea water strength.

   Halophyte Agronomist Dr Shoaib Ismail said: “The research has been going on for over 30 years but only in the last five years have we been at the stage of selecting species, mainly for forage and fodder - but their nutrient value and quality varies. There are 100-150 that can be grown for that purpose and most of the research now is in the management so the crop and soil is not affected.”

   Once plants have been screened for the variations, which will accept salt and still produce acceptable yields, they are grown on a large scale in the centre’s fields and treated as a crop.

   “What we are trying to do is develop sustainable and environmentally friendly plant production systems that are based on the use of saline water and salt affected environments,” explained Field and Forage Crops Scientist, Dr Abdullah Dakheel. “The question for us is the sustainability - to find the production systems that fit the criteria.

   “The whole centre is searching for plants that can tolerate high salinity, be  productive and not destroy the environment in the long term. Once the plants are found we test them in the field with different salinity and determine the appropriate management practices that are most efficient and can lead to sustainability of that production system in terms of fertilisation, water quality, harvesting and drainage, which are all factors which influence productivity.

   “When we test the plants here we know that we are subjecting them to environmental extremes - dryness, high temperatures, high sunshine rates, high evaporation rates, saline water and salt affected environments. If a plant survives and does well under these conditions then it will definitely do well in less stressed environments. Once we prove that a package works, then our final objective is to transfer our findings to the farmers and the various government agencies.”

   Human populations starve because of a lack of food. In dry areas like the Middle East , the food chain tends to rely on animals such as camels, goats and sheep which need forages, while in less dry areas there is a greater emphasis on crops such as rice and vegetables.

   “We are helping to fill the gap in food production,” Dr Dakheel said. “Water is the most scarce resource for agriculture all over the world but especially in dry areas where the lack of sufficient food production is due to a lack of water. Good land for agriculture is there, but what we don’t have is water and that’s why we don’t produce sufficient amounts of food in many places.

   “If we can use alternative water resources, i.e. saline water, and produce food using such water then we will be contributing to two strategic objectives - conserving and relieving pressure on fresh water resources and producing more food.

   “Many international and United Nations agencies are working on this issue, but each institute is tackling it from a different angle and we all compliment each other. We are not saying we are going to solve all the problems in the world, but we have a critical role to play in helping alleviate food shortages and conserving fresh water resources.”