Local farmers learn about sustainable farming methods on the orientation field day.
Doha: The Ministry of Municipality, represented by the Department of Agricultural Research, organised an orientation field day for farmers and farm owners on raising the productivity of leafy and fruit crops with minimal water consumption to achieve food security.
Director of the Department of Agricultural Research Hamad Saket Al Shammari stressed that the field day is a beginning for the new year and will be followed by a number of field days and workshops to present research results and recommendations and learn about the opinions of farmers and those interested in agriculture to develop the research system to serve farmers and achieve food security.
Consultant at the department Dr. Ali El Kharbotly said during his review of ecological and environmental agriculture a new cultivation method has been developed, which is the first of its kind that combines several methods of cultivation, calling it a sustainable Qatari agriculture method.
This will contribute to achieving food security and independence from the global market of fertilisers and agricultural pesticides by following an approach from agriculture that relies on local resources.
He explained that this method helps in increasing the fertility of agricultural soil and boosting the production of organic vegetable crops at competitive prices, given the low cost of production inputs and the preservation of the natural farm resources and the Qatari environment. He pointed out that this new method reduces production costs by more than 90 percent.
For his part, Dr. Al Sayed Al Azazi, an expert on genetic resources, spoke about the development of the germplasm of tomato varieties to resist the high temperatures in Qatar.
He explained that the current research experiments focus on evaluating and selecting a large number of tomato varieties and hybrids to identify the most suitable for the Qatari environment, a heat-tolerant variety, for production in greenhouses.
He added that during the first and second seasons of the project, 239 plant inputs were evaluated to obtain accurate data on the possibility of production during the summer months and resistance to agricultural diseases and pests.
