Dubai researchers focus on the New Generation Greenhouse
The prototype, now under observation by creators at the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (Icba) in Dubai, is aimed at boosting UAE’s domestic food production and is meeting calls by the United Nations to find revolutionary ways to grow more using far less.
In an interview with Gulf News, Dr Redouane Choukr-Allah, senior scientist, Environmental Horticulture with the Icba, said the prototype is called a ‘New Generation Greenhouse’.
The design, Choukr-Allah said, will “save 90 per cent of the irrigation water. This is a closed greenhouse that uses a desiccant that absorbs the water that the leaf transpires during the day and releases vapour in the greenhouse during the night collected as it condenses when temperatures drop at night, and is reused as fresh water”.
“In the ‘New Generation Greenhouse’, we can recycle water evaporated from plants by condensation and we estimate to save up to 90 per cent of water and cut significantly on energy use by 50 per cent,” Choukr-Allah said, adding that “the productivity could reach threefold the actual production by introduction of carbon fertilisation by injecting CO2 inside the greenhouse.”
Read more at Gulf News