A greener approach to meet the growing food and water security demands
Prof. Hassan Arafat conducted a research visit to Wageningen University and TNO, Netherlands. This visit follows a visit by the Netherlands Embassy in UAE to CMAT, where they expressed interest in fostering a research collaboration between CMAT and Dutch applied research universities and industry with innovative water and agriculture technologies, on the other. The embassy offered to facilitate the communication with Dutch universities and companies and provide a seed funding to cover the engagement of the Dutch parties. The goal of this collaboration is to demonstrate the coupling of novel desalination/water treatment technologies (developed by CMAT members and/or Dutch researchers) with state-of-the-art horticulture in order to provide solutions for water and food securities in the UAE. Based on a screening of several Dutch universities, Wageningen University & Research (WUR) was identified as the most likely academic partner. WUR is a world-class agricultural research university, but in recent years, they also took over the management of several water research organizations, like TNO, which pioneered research on innovative desalination technologies such as membrane distillation. (The Netherlands, 9-15 Jun 2019).
