The first water-saving greenhouse appeared in Qatar

The first water-saving greenhouse for growing vegetables and fruits appeared in Qatar. In future, this technology will help reduce agricultural water use by 90 percent. EcoTourism Expert was told about this at the Ministry of Municipalities and Environment of Qatar.

According to Husam Balyushi, a researcher at the Qatar Institute of Environment and Energy, Qatar’s food security policy poses a threat to its scarce water resources.
Therefore, the search for new agricultural water-saving technologies is one of the most urgent tasks for the country today, Balyushi thinks.

Since mid-2017, the number of greenhouse vegetables grown in Qatar has accounted for 28% of the share of all the vegetables sold in the country, although previously only imported vegetables were sold in this emirate. Faleh al-Thani, deputy minister of municipalities and environment for agriculture, told EcoTourism Expert that Qatar is looking for vegetables able to grow in water without soil - and even trying to do this. In addition, much attention is paid to the construction of greenhouses. They try to find a way to reduce the use of air conditioners to cool them.

The first water-saving greenhouse was set up in the Al-Shahania district, 20 kilometres west of the capital Doha. It was designed by a Qatari agricultural company together with the Norwegian manufacturers.

An innovative system for saving water for greenhouses will help not only reduce water use by 90 percent, but also increase the number of vegetables grown by 20 times, the developers promise. These goals can be achieved by using modern fertilizers and a climate control system inside the greenhouse. In general, new technologies will allow using less resources on agriculture and increase its productivity.

According to the equipment developers, despite the fact that Qatar has difficult conditions for growing food due to poor soil, lack of fresh water, difficult climate - the extreme heat in combination with high humidity - nevertheless, the emirate has a great potential to develop their agriculture. In Qatar, there are two times more sunny days a year than in Holland, and thanks to modern water-saving greenhouses, you can get very good vegetable yields, eight times more than usual ones. 

After two or three seasons, producers expect to bring up to 100 kg of tomatoes per square metre instead of 5 kg obtained by traditional technologies. At the same time, the developers of the innovative greenhouses assure that the increase in productivity will not require excessive water consumption. 

As explained by the Norwegian engineers, on average, 60 litres of water are used for outdoor growing a tomato bush in the world. In greenhouses in deserts using a special cooling system for growing vegetables, 30 litres of water are used. The goal of creating a water-saving greenhouse is to grow a tomato bush using only one litre of water.

“These are hydroponic farms where plants are grown without soil in artificially created mineral nutrient solutions in a water solvent and get all the necessary chemicals and elements from these special solutions. To do this, we use an advanced cooling system with a ‘smart climate control’ to establish the most favorable environment conditions inside the greenhouse, but we do not waste water for the air conditioning system operation. This is a closed cycle, which means, among other things, the use of vapour emitted by plants into the atmosphere for recycled irrigation,” said the representatives of the company involved in designing the equipment.

Cold and warm water is supplied to the greenhouse through various pipes. The warm surface water passing through a special line on one side of the greenhouse will evaporate and moisten the air inside the greenhouse due to the hot desert air. The air that becomes colder and humid passes over the plants, creating a comfortable temperature around them, and then condenses due to the contact with the pipes carrying cold water from the depth. The pipes with ground water are needed so that the water vapour could condensate on their cold surface providing a constant replenishment of fresh water. Thus, a closed cycle of air circulation allows you to get additional water from vapour and use it for watering the plants.

In addition, special materials are used for the construction of greenhouses - the plastic material that can reflect heat and ultraviolet rays, so even without air conditioning, the air temperature in the greenhouse can be 20 degrees lower than the temperature outside the greenhouse.

All this strongly resembles the Ridley Scott's movie ‘The Martian’. Fiction often foreshows the future. And this future has come extremely soon. In a new water-saving greenhouse, less than five years after the release of the film, tomato seedlings have already been planted, and the first tomatoes have appeared on some bushes.

According to the World Bank forecast, 60 percent of the Middle East will face an acute shortage of fresh water by 2040, and the amount of rain in the Gulf countries will be reduced by 20 percent.