The 28th edition of the main agricultural technology fair in Latin America changes the time of entry of visitors in order to improve mobility for participants.

The Saudi Arabian company Dava Agricultural is further expanding its greenhouse acreage, by entering into a contract for a new semi-closed greenhouse of 23 hectares to be built with long-term partner Debets Schalke. 

Bahrain-based agribusiness platform Green Corp has acquired a stake in Badia Farms to grow its sustainable food production projects across the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council). 

Yara International announced it will build a new global production plant for specialty crop nutrition products and biostimulants, one of the largest in the world for these products. 

The Agriculture Innovation Mission for Climate (AIM4C) has announced the ICARDA-CGIAR Integrated Desert Farming Innovation Program (IDFIP) as one of its Innovation Sprints, a commitment to increase self-aggregated funding to support climate-smart agriculture and resilient food systems transformation in global drylands and especially in the drylands of North Africa, Central, and West Asia and the Middle East.

Ivvest, a vertical farming company based in Jordan, signed an agreement with the Innovation and Agri Entrepreneurship incubator at Jordan’s National Centre for Agricultural Research, stating this is the beginning of a long-term collaboration with the Centre. 

PepsiCo announced the six companies that will be a part of the second cohort of its Greenhouse Accelerator Program: MENA Sustainability Edition, focused on sustainable agriculture.

This year’s cohort brought forward innovative ideas across five key criteria: alignment to PepsiCo’s sustainability strategy – PepsiCo Positive (pep+) – strategic synergy with PepsiCo, scalability, relevance to MENA, and breakthrough potential.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and The National Research and Development Center for Sustainable Agriculture, known as Estidamah, have signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate on research for sustainable agriculture and food security.

Syngenta has announced the creation of Syngenta Biologicals.

The new brand brings together Valagro, acquired by Syngenta in October 2020, and the company’s in-house biological business.

Yara Africa & Asia has announced that it has opened its first water-soluble fertilizer plant in China.

“By establishing Yara Crop Nutrition (Huaibei) Co., Ltd. Yara China aims to provide farmers, especially smallholder farmers, with high-quality water-soluble fertilizer products to improve crop nutrition and soil health,” the company said.

Almeria, in Andalucía, southern Spain, is probably the largest global concentration of greenhouses, encompassing almost 33,000 hectares of "plastic sea", most of grow winter soil-grown tomatoes, cucumbers, bell peppers, courgettes, eggplants, strawberries, watermelons, melons and more.

The lion's share of this industry is organic-certified, and some 75 percent of these products are exported to other European countries, at a turnover of ~ €3 billion. One of the constrains of this vastly intensive operation is the damages provoked by a large variety of pathogenic soil-borne, air-borne, bacteria, fungi, nematodes, viruses and pests.

Of all the available groundwater on earth, more than half has a salt concentration that impedes crop production. This leaves opportunities for increasing agricultural production with two options: the expensive, often unviable route of treating the water to reduce the salt content, or making the crops salt tolerant. Just how far are researchers adapting our plants? Lindi Botha spoke to the experts to find out.

For the past four years, University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers have studied the prospects for using sensor-based fertigation management to increase the efficiency and profitability of nitrogen use. The latest results are now in from multiple Nebraska sites, and they show that the technology enables major gains in both regards.