Doha, Qatar: To make Qatar self-sufficient in fresh food production, the Agricultural Research Department at the Ministry of Municipality (MoM) is working on a number of research projects to find vegetables species resilient to the local climate and better in quality and quantity.
The projects showed promising results. In the early stages of a project, many plants showed high productivity. For example, the number of fruits on sweet corn plants exceeded four fruits in some plants as well as beans and tomatoes, said the Ministry of Municipality in a report yesterday.
One of the success stories in another project is the development of new varieties of sweet corn, tomatoes and beans resilient to the local climate. Work on this project began in 2019, and currently the new varieties have reached the fifth generation.
During the next two years, these varieties will be tested by farmers and the varieties that prove their worth and adapt to local climate conditions will be approved.
The department has adopted a number of advanced research projects to provide agricultural inputs locally through the use of nuclear and biotechnology techniques.
Director of the Agricultural Research Department Hamad Saket Al Shammari said that one of three major projects aims at “developing the best practices for soil, nutrients, water, and plants to increase the production of vegetables in greenhouses and fodder in saline conditions using nuclear energy”.
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He said the project, a partnership between the department and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), seeks to develop the best agricultural practices to increase the production of fodder and vegetables in the salty conditions and extreme heat that characterise the Qatari climate.
Al Shammari said the project is based on the use of nuclear and radiation techniques to improve and develop varieties of vegetable plants that are resistant to salt and heat.
He said these techniques include the use of nuclear radiation to cause genetic mutations in seeds, leading to the emergence of new strains of plants capable of adapting to harsh environmental conditions.
Al Shammari said that tissue culture and genetic engineering techniques will also be used to improve the characteristics of plants and to increase their productivity.
He said the project relies heavily on the use of biochar produced at the Al Atouriyah Research Station for Vegetables and Horticulture as an essential input in the process of building soil, fertilisation, and improving plant productivity.
Al Shammari explained that during the agricultural research operations in this project, eight greenhouses with a total area of 2,800 square metres and an area of 2,000 square metres of farm were planted over a period of two years, and the number of plants was 2,000 plants of each of the following types: tomatoes, beans, and sugar corn, in the first generation M1.
In the second generation, he said, 60,000 plants of the same species were selected and planted, the seeds of each plant were collected independently, and studies were conducted on the phenotypic characteristics, production, and quality of the fruits in order to identify the most suitable plants that had mutations to be planted in the next season.
