Dubai farm's underground irrigation could save a trillion litres of water a year

Project may dramatically reduce water waste if used throughout the UAE, company says

Dubai company Terraplus uses underground technology to water palm trees. It claims this could save up to a trillion litres of water a year in the UAE if widely adopted by date farmers. All photos by Antonie Robertson / The National

Khalil Ur Rahman, who works closely with the Terraplus project, shows water seeping through the company's unique underground watering system. It allows water to reach the roots, which often clog up traditional underground pipe systems

Traditional topsoil watering 'bubblers', like the one pictured, have an evaporation rate of about 30 per cent

Khalil Ur Rahman checks a water flow meter on a traditional watering bubbler used for irrigation in the UAE

The Terraplus system may save water in the UAE if date farmers adopt the technology

The Dubai firm claim its system could save the country up to a trillion litres a year

Terraplus co-founders Patrick Stevens and Nicolas Bruylants with an above-ground display of the system

A Dubai farm is at the centre of a project which it says could save a trillion litres of water a year in the UAE.

This equates to roughly the amount used by half the emirate's population.

Tests have been conducted since 2019 at the Al Awir date farm – on the outskirts of the city – which has more than 1,260 date palm trees.

The farm has teamed up with an agritech company, Terraplus Solutions, to implement an underground watering system that reduces the amount of water lost through traditional irrigation methods, which can be as high as 30 per cent.

“We are creating a solution to the issue of how much water is used each year by the agriculture sector,” said Nicolas Bruylants, co-founder of Terraplus Solutions.

“This is a sector that uses 70 per cent of all potable water each year globally.

“We are doing this because we believe each of us has a duty to give back to the world we live in.”

The company estimates that its underground system saved, on average, 40,000 to 50,000 litres of water per tree every year.

This represents a saving of 60 per cent compared with watering the trees with the traditional above-ground methods widely used around the world.

Mr Bruylants said that the underground irrigation system means less water is lost to evaporation, a common problem when watering above the surface.

He said if the technology was installed across the country it could transform the sector, because the UAE has an estimated 20 million date palm trees.

The annual potential savings would be the equivalent of a 200-metre tank of water stretching all the way along the Sheikh Zayed Road from Abu Dhabi to Dubai, he said.

The farm, where the project is in use, is one of several owned by Al Nakhli, a government agricultural agency.

“It is important for the UAE not to put further stress on the country’s water resources,” said Al Nakhli agronomist Khalil Ur Rahman.

“We have been working on this project to see how we can save water.

“Farmers need to know we have a limited amount of water and we need to make it viable for them to use less without reducing the quality of what they produce.”

Mr Ur Rahman said he hoped the project could be introduced across Al Nakhli’s other date palm farms soon.

Before Al Awir Farm used the new system it was losing about 170 million litres of water a year.

That figure has fallen to about 86 million litres after it adopted the subsurface technology.

Terraplus’s irrigation system inserts pipes into the ground, which allows water to directly find the roots of the tree.

Mr Ur Rahman said another benefit of the new technology is that it has resulted in a 10 per cent increase in the amount of crop each tree produces.

Patrick Stevens, co-founder of Terraplus Solutions, said his company’s invention meant the amount of water lost to evaporation was greatly reduced.

“When we go below the surface there is less water lost to irrigation. When you are irrigating above the surface a lot of water is lost and the roots become shorter,” he said.

“With our system, the roots can actually grow about 60 per cent to 70 per cent.”