Qatar Son 333
September 27th, 2010, 11:14 AM
From salty to arable: Dukhan land gets makeover
DOHA: A Qatari company has developed extreme salty areas in Dukhan into productive farm lands that grow high quality vegetables and other crops and produces biodiesels from Jatropha using biotechnology.
Mohammad bin Nasser Al Attiya, director for ABA Agricultural Resources, said they transformed a wide area of salty lands as experimental farm for biotechnology and the results yielded best quality tomatoes, black peppers, green peas, feed grains, corn, sunflower and several others.
The experimental farm has also productively grown Jatropha Curcas, a flowering plant considered by researchers as the best candidate to produce biodiesel because it is resistant to drought and pest and the cake of its seeds after oil extraction could also be considered for energy production.
“The biotechnology use in our Dukhan farm that was used to be heavily salted and re-farmed it into productive arable lands was excellent,” Al Attiya told Al Sharq in an interview.
He said the farm was developed by their company by their own resources and there were offers from abroad to help them with further research but they declined saying this should be only be developed by Qatari nationals.
He said they wanted the experimental farm for a start for other Qataris to develop it to be a leading technology in the industry and expand it to other areas among GCC states. The Peninsula
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Interesting, this should help Qatar to reduce food imports dependency.
DOHA: A Qatari company has developed extreme salty areas in Dukhan into productive farm lands that grow high quality vegetables and other crops and produces biodiesels from Jatropha using biotechnology.
Mohammad bin Nasser Al Attiya, director for ABA Agricultural Resources, said they transformed a wide area of salty lands as experimental farm for biotechnology and the results yielded best quality tomatoes, black peppers, green peas, feed grains, corn, sunflower and several others.
The experimental farm has also productively grown Jatropha Curcas, a flowering plant considered by researchers as the best candidate to produce biodiesel because it is resistant to drought and pest and the cake of its seeds after oil extraction could also be considered for energy production.
“The biotechnology use in our Dukhan farm that was used to be heavily salted and re-farmed it into productive arable lands was excellent,” Al Attiya told Al Sharq in an interview.
He said the farm was developed by their company by their own resources and there were offers from abroad to help them with further research but they declined saying this should be only be developed by Qatari nationals.
He said they wanted the experimental farm for a start for other Qataris to develop it to be a leading technology in the industry and expand it to other areas among GCC states. The Peninsula
--------------------
Interesting, this should help Qatar to reduce food imports dependency.