Sultan Qaboos CentER

for Soilless Agriculture

aBOUT

cENTER

The Sultan Qaboos Centre for Desert Farming and Soilless Agriculture Techniques was founded in 2001 after the establishment of the Chair of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos for Desert Farming in 1994 by the late Prof. Muhammad Nabil Alaeddin and Prof. Waleed Zubari, with the blessing of the President of the University at the time, Her Excellency Prof. Rafia Ghubash.

The Sultan Qaboos Centre remained the technical arm of the academic chair and the field laboratory to serve the Desert and Arid Lands Science Program initially, and later the Department of Natural Resources and Environment in terms of practical research, training workshops and community service; all for the purpose of spreading desert farming and soilless agriculture techniques, with a focus on implementing qualitative research to overcome natural and technical obstacles to raise the efficiency of resource usage, maintain the sustainability of the agricultural sector, increase its contribution to supporting food security, raise awareness, and prepare capabilities to employ modern technologies and innovation. The centre currently includes three greenhouses and modern irrigation control devices that have been converted into King Abdullah Medical City. It is proposed to harness solar energy to transform it into an eco-friendly agricultural experimentation system. The centre also possesses advanced laboratory devices and equipment to analyse soil and plant content in terms of nutrients, heavy metals and biological pollutants.

The activities of the Sultan Qaboos Centre include several recent research projects, including one on the use of amino acids in irrigation water for palm trees, which won the King Hamad Prize for Best Agricultural Research; an experimental project for growing quinoa crop in the Kingdom of Bahrain, among whose achievements a doctoral student graduated from the State of Kuwait; in addition to the partial irrigation project. The latter was managed and monitored using the Internet of Things (IoT) to irrigate date palms, in cooperation with the National Space Science Agency, the Ministry of Municipalities Affairs and Agriculture, and the Dutch company for smart agriculture SFS. It was recently implemented in a palm field in the Hoarat A'ali region of the Kingdom of Bahrain, and its results are being published in international periodicals.

The Chair Grant of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos

The Chair Grant of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos has supported the centre by providing most of the devices and equipment required by the soil and plant laboratory in the former Desert and Arid Land Sciences Program and the current Department of Natural Resources and Environment. Therefore, all previous successes are credited to the contribution provided by His Majesty Sultan Qaboos, may God have mercy on him. We hope that support and endeavours may continue so that the centre, represented by the chair of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos, can perform its duty in tackling pressing issues in fields of agricultural production, the environment and sustainable healthy food, in a manner that propels development, security and prosperity in the Gulf, the Arab region, and the world.