Cultivating miracles: The inspiring story of Israel's agricultural triumphs

IGIHE

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Transcript

00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]

00:02 Due to the fact that the majority of the country

00:15 is made up of deserts, growing various crops

00:18 can be difficult and somewhat dangerous in Israel.

00:21 For instance, the Negev that makes up 60% of Israel

00:25 is a hot, dry area in the south of the nation

00:28 and gets less than eight inches of rain annually.

00:31 The Negev Desert factors into the events of Abraham's life

00:35 and through the period of Israel's

00:37 wandering in the wilderness.

00:40 The region was also important from the time

00:42 of the United Monarchy until the time of the divided kingdom.

00:46 Despite its aridity, the Negev Desert

00:49 is home to cherry tomatoes, fish farms, olive groves,

00:52 plantations of many varieties of fruit and vegetable,

00:55 and many other unusual crops chosen

00:57 for their resistance to the desert conditions.

01:01 This is due to the drip irrigation system, which

01:03 when compared to other existing methods,

01:05 is the best solution for environmentally safe, efficient,

01:09 and sustainable agricultural productivity

01:11 for arid and semi-arid regions of the world

01:13 to use scarce water resources.

01:16 The achievement is also attributed

01:18 to innovations in which researchers use technology

01:21 to monitor crops such as avocados, among others.

01:24 [MUSIC PLAYING]

01:50 We apply-- we prepare the irrigation solution there

01:54 with all the nutrients.

01:56 And it's brought to the plants or the dripper.

01:59 OK?

02:00 So the tree receives everything, all the nutrients

02:03 it needs from the dripper.

02:05 OK?

02:05 But it's still controlled.

02:07 Yeah, it's fully controlled.

02:08 This is part of the experiment.

02:09 Fully controlled, but no GM.

02:11 OK?

02:12 And then I can take the result from here

02:14 and tell the farmer in the field,

02:17 you need to give so-and-so nitrogen, so-and-so potassium,

02:20 and so-and-so phosphorus in order

02:23 to maximize yields with the highest quality.

02:26 We assess here both quality of the fruit, of the table grape,

02:30 and quantity, the yield.

02:32 OK?

02:34 What you can see is very similar to what we saw in the table

02:37 grape.

02:38 So we can check irrigation, fertilizer, also

02:42 not just the macroelements, nitrogen, phosphorus,

02:45 and the potassium.

02:47 Also microelements, we can put different stuff.

02:50 And what we can see, if you will go in, as you asked before,

02:53 so all the solutions are prepared there

02:55 in the central point.

02:56 And with pump, it irrigates the different pots.

03:00 Each of them will receive exactly what we want.

03:02 We control it very nice.

03:04 We can control the drainage out.

03:07 You can see it come here.

03:08 So what you can see, as I mentioned,

03:14 it's less than four years old avocado tree.

03:17 And you can see that if you are looking all around,

03:21 it's like a real orchard.

03:23 So the environment is like a totally real orchard.

03:27 Avocado is more complicated orchard

03:29 as compared to the grapes, because we need also pollinator.

03:34 So this is ass.

03:35 And the pollinator is ettinger, I think.

03:38 So we need to combine them in order to receive fruit.

03:40 It just, I think, finished, removed all the fruit.

03:42 But it was a very nice fruiting already this year.

03:45 And what is nice here, if you can see,

03:48 there is pipes that going out from the containers.

03:50 And in the end of the line, everything is collected.

03:54 And you can monitor all the drainage that's going down.

03:56 So we can check exactly what is going in,

04:00 what the tree took up, consumed, and what is going out.

04:04 So we can do everything.

04:06 Everything is monitoring also with some probes that

04:09 monitor the flow inside the tree.

04:12 So we can-- and this is online.

04:13 We can see all the time the water status of the tree,

04:16 understand better what is going on with the tree,

04:20 how it's filled, how much water is going,

04:22 is transpired via the tree.

04:25 So everything is very, very controlled.

04:26 And then we can much more precise

04:28 in our understanding the process of this different treatment.

04:32 [MUSIC PLAYING]

04:35 My name is Professor Arnon Dag.

04:46 I'm the Deputy Director of the center, Gilad Research Center,

04:50 which specialize on agriculture under semi-desert condition

04:54 or desert condition.

04:56 The main topics that I'm researching

04:59 is orchard cultivation and orchard physiology.

05:02 We are working on different crops

05:04 like olive, pomegranate, avocado, jojoba.

05:09 And we're looking for a way to optimize productivity

05:14 and to have high-quality fruit production.

05:17 For example, in the avocado that we have seen earlier,

05:20 we are looking for evaporative cooling

05:23 to mitigate issues of heat stress.

05:27 We have very hot and dry climate during springtime.

05:31 And in order to reduce the heat stress,

05:34 we spray some water on the tree.

05:36 The water evaporates and cools the canopy of the tree.

05:40 And we just measured the yield of one of those experiments.

05:44 And we found that we reached five times the yield

05:47 if we compare between the treated to the control tree.

05:53 So this is one direction.

05:55 Other direction that we are working

05:57 is to optimize irrigation level.

05:59 We are looking for the right level of irrigation.

06:01 Again, not to waste too much water from one hand

06:05 and from the other hand to have highest yield as possible.

06:12 Just to mention that in Israel, we

06:14 are using all the orchards are irrigated using drip irrigation.

06:19 And also the fertilizer applied via the irrigation system,

06:23 what we call fertigation.

06:25 And again, we are looking for the right level of fertilizer

06:28 to be applied in order to maximize yield and quality.

06:32 Daily basis, how much water the tree needs,

06:36 whether we need to irrigate more or we can reduce the irrigation.

06:40 It's mainly those sensors are using mainly

06:42 to control irrigation.

06:44 Because irrigation under dry conditions,

06:47 under our condition, is the main issue.

06:49 You need to supply enough water to the tree.

06:51 When the tree have enough water, it opens the stomata.

06:54 When it opens the stomata, doing photosynthesis,

06:58 and then produce sugar and fruit.

07:01 So we'd like the plant to open the stomata as much as possible.

07:04 So we supply water.

07:06 The invention of drip irrigation was done in kibbutz Hatzirim.

07:10 It's five kilometers from here.

07:12 It was something like 50 years ago.

07:14 And still, one of the loudest factory in the world

07:18 is existing Hatzirim.

07:20 And they produce the drip irrigation system.

07:24 And the idea of drip irrigation is

07:26 to supply the plant with water directly

07:29 to the roots at the right place at the right time

07:32 and not allow the water to evaporate.

07:35 When we are using water by flooding, a lot of the water

07:39 evaporates to the atmosphere.

07:41 When we supply the water via drip irrigation,

07:44 everything you supply is going directly to the plant.

07:47 So the water use efficiency is very, very high.

07:51 Slowly, slowly, more and more countries

07:58 are using drip irrigation.

08:01 Unfortunately, until now, only a small proportion

08:04 of the irrigated land in the world

08:06 using drip irrigation.

08:08 But with water scarcity, which many, many countries are facing,

08:12 drip irrigation use is one of the most promising approach

08:16 to save water and continue to produce food.

08:19 You know, basically, in Africa, you

08:21 have relatively good climate.

08:23 You have good soil.

08:26 Many places, you have sources of water.

08:27 So potentially, you can produce the food you need.

08:31 You can do it.

08:32 But I think there are two components that

08:35 are missing many times.

08:36 One of them is centralized organization.

08:39 So the government will supply the water, for example.

08:42 Or the government will supply the extension people

08:45 and the knowledge.

08:46 This is one component that might be missing in some places.

08:50 And the other component that might be missing

08:53 is enough knowledge.

08:54 So you need to develop more knowledge in each area,

08:58 how to increase productivity.

09:00 I'm sure, I'm completely sure that Africa can produce more

09:05 than they need.

09:06 And you can export--

09:07 good example is India.

09:09 You know that India, in the past,

09:11 imported a lot of food in order to feed the people.

09:15 And now, what they--

09:16 India became a huge exporter of food.

09:19 What happened?

09:20 They start to use drip irrigation.

09:22 They start to use fertilizer.

09:24 They know-- they learn a lot of agriculture.

09:27 They use the technology.

09:29 So from a field that you get a certain amount of production,

09:33 you have much higher production.

09:35 It can be done in Africa.

09:36 The same way they've done it in India and in Israel,

09:40 in Western Europe.

09:41 There is no reason why not.

09:42 The people in Africa are clever.

09:44 They can learn it easily.

09:45 It's just a matter of technology and involvement

09:49 of the government.

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