Southern Arava R&D Center Leads in Developing Innovative Crops and Growing Methods According to the director Yair Eshel, the Center’s location at the southern tip of Israel, far from the country’s main academic and research centers hinders its activities and progress.
A shortage of funding makes it difficult to bring leading researchers to the area.
The Ministry of Agriculture is the major funding source but its budget is limited so we rely also on the generous support of the Keren Kayemet LeIsrael (Israel National Fund) and other organizations.
The Center has adopted three principal future objectives: Education, the dairy industry and marking the Center’s 50th anniversary.
“Some 50% of the R&D budget is allocated to the palm dates industry, the region’s major crop, while smaller budgets are allocated to research on water and soil, growing vegetables, pomegranates and new crops and plants.”
As elsewhere in Israel water is a very important issue and it is significant that the first field trials with drip irrigation were carried out here.
Menachem Shmueli who was involved in that important project maintains that “although we are located at the very end of the country, we shall succeed with more impressive breakthroughs, which I cannot reveal at the present time.”
Other irrigation systems being introduced include the use of a sensory and control system based on lysimeters, which provide researchers Uri Shani and Alon Ben-Gal with data on the plants’ water consumption, evaporation rates or seepage among other factors.
These data help the researchers decide on the optimal irrigation for each specific crop. A further innovation in irrigation is the IOD system (Irrigation On Demand), on which Gal Ashkenazi is currently working using improved sensory systems to gauge the roots’ suction thereby indicating when the plant needs irrigation.
The IOD system was developed at the Southern Arava R&D Center.
Other areas, in which research is ongoing at this R&D Center is the development of new crops and plants to expand the farmers’ activities and improve their economy.
These developments include not only fruit and vegetables but also desert plants of horticultural and health value.
One fruit which is currently being developed and undergoing trials by Motti Harari in cooperation with Dr. Doron Holand is the evergreen pomegranate aimed at extending the fruit’s season by five months. These are just a few of the ongoing developments at the Southern Arava R&D Center, all aimed at “increasing the farmers’ earnings” as it plans to celebrate its 50th anniversary.
