A key commodity throughout the Arabian Peninsula, date palm

Photo credit: Arab News

On August 12, 2013, photo shows a young farmer carrying a palm frond bearing dates during the dates harvest season in Disa, around 200 km from the northwestern city of Tabuk. (Reuters)

Date palm: a strategic crop for the Arabian Peninsula

Date palm is a key commodity throughout the Arabian Peninsula. In addition to its nutritional value, the crop is also an important source of feed and fuel, and can be used as building material in the construction of houses.

In order to improve the region’s date palm production, ICARDA’s Arabian Peninsula Regional Program (APRP) has initiated a number of capacity strengthening events targeting engineers, extension agents, technicians, and farmers.

A field day training at the El Hamrania Research Station in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) introduced new date palm production techniques to staff from the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, including fertigation, post-harvest operations, and integrated pest management (IPM), a practical and environmentally-friendly approach to pest control that emphasizes the use of cultural and biological interventions, and only supports the targeted use of chemical interventions when alternative methods have been exhausted, costs are not excessive, and there is no threat to existing agro-ecosystems.

The training combined lectures and practical applications, including pollen handling and storage, and compared the advantages of various pollination methods such as liquid pollen suspension, dry pollination, and traditional hand pollination.

Moving forward, it is recommended that liquid pollination be applied early in the growing season and that further capacity strengthening be provided to equip practitioners with the necessary skills to effectively apply this methodology.

Read the full article: ICARDA

The Sabla Project in Al Ain (UAE)

Photo credit: The National – 

The Sabla Project has been designed as a potential solution to some of the developing world’s most serious challenges: climate change, desertification, the increasing scarcity of resources, food security and food waste. Christopher Pike / The National

The Sabla Project: Building on past experience

by Nick Leech

EXCERPT

The results of the team’s efforts can currently be seen in the Sabla Project, a shelter that is still under development on a patch of waste ground next to the oasis in Al Ain.

The Sabla Project has been designed as a potential solution to some of the developing world’s most serious challenges: climate change, desertification, the increasing scarcity of resources, food security and food waste. Christopher Pike / The National – http://www.thenational.ae/storyimage/AB/20150308/ARTICLE/150309099/EP/1/2/EP-150309099.jpg&MaxW=640&imageVersion=default

The Sabla Project consist of a series of domes constructed from palm fronds that have been bundled together as arches then erected at right angles to form a series of gridshells – lightweight structures whose strength derives from their curvature.

The palm fronds have been harvested directly from the nearby oasis and are neatly bound together, and to each other, with rope that is also made from the palms.

Rather than some obscure exercise in cultural heritage or architectural experimentation, however, the Sabla Project has been designed as a potential solution to some of the developing world’s most serious challenges: climate change, desertification, the increasing scarcity of resources, food security and food waste.

In India alone, 40 per cent of food is wasted because of a lack of adequate places for its shelter and storage.

The architectural prototype exists thanks to the traditional skills of a team of master craftsmen from Abu Dhabi’s Tourism & Culture Authority, contemporary construction knowhow provided by the London-based BuroHappold Engineering and tests conducted in the Structural Engineering Laboratories at Imperial College London.

“What we’ve created is an example of intermediate technology that has made the transition from a small arish hut, something that traditionally measured maybe two metres by six metres, into something that has 500 square metres,” Ms Piesik says.

“What it demonstrates is that the material, when combined with modern architectural and engineering thinking, can do other things that are new and innovative at an urban scale. I think that’s very important.”

Read the full article: The National