Weather in the Kingdom Saudi Arabia is characterized by long hot summer and limited water recourses. Recently, the greenhouse production sector has highly developed in the Kingdom, since protected cultivation, where high-tech climate control technologies are used, is a necessity for a year-round production of essential vegetable crops.
Soil cultivation increases soil-borne diseases and accumulate salinity. Many cultural and crop management practices could be introduced for protected cultivation to improve productivity and quality, and to significantly boost the success and economic return
The extensive use of chemicals to control diseases and pests in open field and greenhouses cultivation results in complex problems of insect resistance to chemicals, in addition to health and environmental hazards. Crop protection can be achieved by using control measures other than relying mainly on chemical pesticides
As agriculture depends largely on nonrenewable water resources in the Kingdom, limited water resources pose the main challenge for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Reducing water consumption and improving water efficiency are essential to enhance agriculture sustainability and support food security.
Vertical farming, also known as indoor farming, has gained a lot of interest in the recent years, since the market is getting more demanding, in terms of quality of the produce which should be pesticide-free, tasty and available all year.
Estidamah’s IPM program incorporates a wide range of practices, including crop rotation, cultural control measures, biosocial control, and other alternative techniques.
In the Kingdom, soilless culture is considered an ideal solution to overcome problems of soil-borne pathogens, and a promising technique to control water and nutrition consumption.
Estidamah research programs focus on improving the crop management cultural practices that apply good agriculture practices (GAP) for all cultivated crops to achieve maximum production with high safety standards.
To increase water use efficiency, Estidamah focuses on modern techniques that help to reduce cooling water demands and increasing yield production per cultivated area
On Estidamah, the Low-tech greenhouses are single-span pad and fan-cooled high tunnels. The medium-tech greenhouses are tall, multi-span, glass-covered greenhouses with a soilless growing system, a...
