The Saudi Arabian company Dava Agricultural is further expanding its greenhouse acreage, by entering into a contract for a new semi-closed greenhouse of 23 hectares to be built with long-term partner Debets Schalke.
Owned by the Al-Batal family, Dava’s greenhouse complexes, located in the Al-Kharj region, including the new project will cover over 110 hectares and are spread over six different locations in Saudi Arabia. At the end of this month, 30 hectares will be in operation and at the end of this year another 40 hectares will be full with vegetable plants.
“In 2019 we started with the construction of the first greenhouse complexes in collaboration with Debets Schalke. Dava was a start-up in the agricultural sector, but we are now a solid organization, a thriving company with an ambitious vision and our location is right at the crossroads of important international trade routes between three continents: Asia, Europe and Africa,” said Faisal Al-Batal, owner of Dava. “As a pioneer in the Middle East, Debets Schalke is able to realize high-tech greenhouse projects suitable for the local climate conditions. The greenhouses offer the opportunity to grow vegetables year-round in an energy-efficient way. Knowledge exchange between the Dutch horticultural sector and Dava is essential for further development in the field of horticulture in Saudi Arabia.”
Dava stated the expansion contributes to Saudi Vision 2030, a strategic framework to reduce Saudi Arabia’s dependence on oil, diversify the economy, and develop public service sectors and sustainable food production. ●
A 20-hectare semi-closed glass greenhouse project under construction for Dava in Saudi-Arabia. Credit: Debets Schalke
ENERGLIK is an Interreg VI Flanders-the Netherlands project (ERDF) aimed at supporting the transition to a future-proof horticulture industry in the Dutch-Belgian border region.
Within the project, research centres from Belgium and the Netherlands will work together for the next three years on innovations in the field of energy saving in greenhouse horticulture.
The ENERGLIK project focuses on four innovation domains: capturing, purification and stocking of CO2 flues to improve dosing; continued development of day- and night-time screens; optimization of dehumidification technology; and development and optimization of a novel sensor technology to monitor spore count in horticulture.
The overall goal of the project is to integrate these innovations into an energy-efficient growing system.
The project is funded by the European Regional Development Fund of the European Union through Interreg VIa Flanders-the Netherlands (€ 2.498.650,00 EU subsidy). Additional funding is provided by the Province of Limburg
and the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate.
The innovations will be directly tested and implemented in horticulture research centres in Belgium and the Netherlands. This will allow to quantify the amount of energy that each of the innovations can induce prior to implementing them into practical tests inthe industry.
Based on this knowhow, the project partners will develop a measurement tool that allows suppliers and growers to calculate which innovations are most interesting for their daily practices in terms of improving energy efficiency. In a final report, the project partners will simulate and calculate the effect
of the developed technology on sustainability and economic feasibility.
ENERGLIK is a public-private, cross-border partnership in which three knowledge institutions (Maastricht University, Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, and Ghent University) collaborate with four public research institutes (lead partner Proefcentrum Hoogstraten, Proefstation voor de Groenteteelt, Stichting Wageningen Research, and Instituut voor Landbouw- en Visserijonderzoek), and four regional SMEs (Plant Lighting, Botany, Maurice Kassenbouw, and Verhoeven QH). ●
Western Sydney University researchers will deliver smart new solutions for monitoring and managing horticultural crops in protected facilities ranging from polytunnels, glasshouses and vertical farms as part of a $6.8 million industry-oriented collaboration.
Co-funded by the Commonwealth via the Future Food Systems Cooperative Research Centre, the collaboration will address commercial challenges around labour costs, pollination and diseases to support Australian growers by researching innovative and cost-effective solutions.
Lead researcher Professor Oula Ghannoum, from Western Sydney University’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment and National Vegetable Protected Cropping Centre (NVPCC), said the research team will develop and test non-invasive ways to monitor key crop attributes such as yield, quality, stress, disease and pollination, providing foundation research that supports Australia’s expanding protected cropping (PC) sector in transitioning to advanced, high-tech decision support systems (DSS).
“Remote sensing is widely used in broadacre farming, through cameras and sensors attached to drones or gantries, but its application to highly managed and controlled facilities is still in its infancy,” said Prof. Ghannoum. “The rapidly growing protected cropping industry faces multiple challenges related to the cost and training of skilled labour; limitations in capturing, integrating, storing and processing data from various cameras and sensors; developing imaging platforms suitable for protected facilities; and training the model. The research aims to address these challenges by establishing a flexible decision support system.”
Innovation in protected cropping is part of a global priority. Yet most protected cropping related technologies to date have been developed for and tested in regions with temperate, cool or desert climates.
“Adapting new protected cropping technologies to subtropical and tropical climate conditions will reduce reliance on imported technology and has the potential to lower the cost of production for protected crops, bolster resilience in Australia’s domestic food supply chain, and increase our global competitiveness,” says Distinguished Professor David Tissue, from Western Sydney University’s Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment. “This project is taking a pragmatic approach to ‘smart’ greenhouse R&D in Australia, directing efforts toward practical, integrated solutions that meet local needs and cost structures, involving collaboration between plant scientists and industry professionals.”
Initially, the research team will test and develop cost-effective imaging and sensing solutions for near-real-time monitoring of crop growth, nutrition, health, fruit yield and quality in the NVPCC experimental glasshouse.
Following the validation of solutions deemed most promising, trials will commence in commercial facilities including Vertical Patch’s high-tech indoor urban vertical farms in Sydney’s CBD and a large-scale vegetable production facility on New South Wales’ Central Coast.
The five-and-a-half year ‘Automated Crop Monitoring for Protected Cropping systems’ project will run until mid-2028. Industry partners also include NSW Department of Primary Industries, Episteme Solutions and Rijk Zwaan. ●
Photo: Sally Tsoutas,Western Sydney University
