Al Miyah Challenge Field Trials Test Two UAE Technologies for Farm Water Savings

Two UAE companies have reached the final stage of a competition built to find technologies that use less water in farming. CRETA Group and Raincatcher Technologies are finalists in the Al Miyah Challenge for Agriculture, run by the Mohamed bin Zayed Water Initiative. One attacks the water consumed to keep greenhouses cool. The other attacks what drains away beneath the soil.

The two entries map onto the places where water most often disappears in Gulf agriculture: the cooling that keeps greenhouse crops alive through summer, and the share of every irrigation cycle that runs past the root zone in sandy ground. The challenge looks for technologies that improve water efficiency in agricultural production, then puts them through field trials. Those trials are designed to show how each system performs under conditions specific to the UAE, including extreme heat, sandy soils and irrigation demands that shift from one crop to the next. Both are being assessed in the UAE, and both are built to be fitted to agricultural infrastructure that already exists rather than requiring growers to start again.

Cooling the crop rather than the building

CRETA Group's system is a climate-management package for greenhouses that combines underground heat exchange, engineered airflow, pressure management and thermal storage. Its distinguishing idea is scale. Instead of cooling the entire greenhouse volume to a single setpoint, the system regulates the temperature in the zone immediately around the plants.

The company is running the system at a 520-square-metre pilot facility in Al Ain, where summer air temperatures can approach 50°C. At that site CRETA reports air-temperature reductions of roughly 12-15°C and cooling-related electricity use 30-40% below conventional systems. The design goal is to hold crop-zone temperatures between 28°C and 32°C at the peak of summer.

On water, CRETA is aiming for an 85-90% cut in cooling-related consumption compared with conventional fan-and-pad cooling. That figure is a design target, not a measured result from the pilot. The economics are similarly mixed: initial installation costs about 20-30% more than a conventional greenhouse, offset by underground infrastructure the company expects to last more than 20 years.

A soil treatment that holds water at the roots

Raincatcher Technologies, based in Dubai, takes a different route. Its product is a biodegradable soil treatment that keeps irrigation water near plant roots and releases it as the surrounding soil dries. The formulation pairs superabsorbent polymers with nutrients, injected into the ground using specialised equipment. The purpose is to reduce the water lost to drainage and evaporation, a particular problem in sandy soils that drain quickly.

The clearest published evidence comes from date palms. A trial at the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture in Dubai, covering 27 palms, recorded an 85% reduction in irrigation water use. Treated palms were watered every seven days; untreated palms were watered daily. Moisture sensors decided when irrigation was needed.

Results vary by crop. A sweet-corn trial at Silal Innovation Oasis in Al Ain recorded water consumption about 20-25% lower in treated plots than in untreated ones. Across five years of field trials in Türkiye, Morocco and Kyrgyzstan, the company reported water savings of 40-85%, along with yield increases of 20% to more than 90% under water-stressed conditions.

Cost estimates are quoted per unit of planting. Raincatcher puts treatment at about US$7 per date palm per year, US$5 per orchard tree and US$600 per hectare for field crops. The treatment is applied through existing irrigation systems and is designed to stay effective for one to three growing seasons depending on the crop. The material itself degrades over about seven years on average.

Why retrofits carry weight

Both entries share a trait that matters as much as their savings claims: they are meant to be added to greenhouses and irrigation lines already in the ground. For growers, that removes the biggest barrier to adoption, which is rarely the price of the new equipment and usually the cost of writing off the old. A system that demands a new greenhouse or a rebuilt irrigation network competes against every other use of that capital. One that bolts onto existing infrastructure competes mainly against the water bill. The field trials will show whether either system holds its numbers through a UAE summer, and those results will determine how far the claims travel.