for Saudi Arabia’s Flagship International Tourism Destination Boosting Global Date Fruit Production

BOOSTING GLOBAL DATE FRUIT PRODUCTION

KHALIFA INTERNATIONAL AWARD

“The winners contribute to the development of the date palm sector and agricultural innovation worldwide.”

Dr. Abdelouahhab Zaid, Secretary General of the Khalifa International Award for Date Palm and Agricultural Innovation

Dates are an important part of many people’s diets around the world, and hold particular importance for Saudi Arabia and the wider Middle East. According to the National Palms and Dates Center, the Kingdom produces an estimated 1.1 million tons of dates per year. This is equivalent to 15% of the world’s date production. The date palm is one of the few fruit trees that that can grow in the desert. Its ability to survive in an arid climate characterized by extreme temperatures and drought have historically made it an important source of food in the region. Date palm trees can grow to 23 meters tall, with a lifespan of more than 100 years. Dates are famous for their nutritional value, owing to high quantities of both potassium and magnesium. However, to date, basic understanding and detailed descriptions of the early development of date palm – which is essential to unraveling the species’ adaptation to arid desert conditions – were lacking. Using advanced microscopy, transcriptomics and metabolomics, KAUST scientists unraveled date palm adaptations to desert conditions. This understanding provides important foundational knowledge for the expansion of desert agriculture, which is essential in the face of global climate change. The international award-winning project marks the first comprehensive study of date palm growth and development, and revealed how date palm plants use unusual developmental programs to cope with challenging conditions such as poor soil and IKRAM BLILOU Associate Professor of Plant Science

THE DATE PALM IS ONE OF THE FEW FRUIT TREES THAT, REMARKABLY, CAN GROW IN THE DESERT. AT KAUST, WE HAVE BEGUN TO DEVELOP NEW BREEDING STRATEGIES TO HELP PALMS GROW FASTER AND HEALTHIER, AS WELL AS MAKE THEM MORE RESISTANT

A step towards understanding the basic mechanisms of date palm growth and adaptation to desert conditions

TO PATHOGENS AND PESTS. limited water supply. These developmental innovations include remote germination, seedling dormancy, and a hydraulic system to efficiently colonize soil and uptake water.

In January 2020, Professor Ikram Bilou was declared one of the winners of the Khalifa International Award for Date Palm and Agricultural Innovation. Out of 141 candidates from 28 countries, Professor Bilou was one of four winners. The achievement adds to a growing chorus of global acknowledgement and recognition of KAUST’s contribution to science and service to society. Out of the award’s four categories, Professor Blilou won the Distinguished Innovative Studies and Modern Technology category for her project. The award includes 1 million UAE dirhams ($272,000).

After establishing a date palm research program at KAUST, the next stage for the team – in collaboration with KAUST’s Center for Desert Agriculture (CDA) – is to create breeding strategies for date palm. The CDA aims to create a molecular toolbox for efficient date palm breeding. Within the Fast Fit Palm project, the CDA teams are designing molecular and biotechnological tools to greatly accelerate date palm growth and fitness. One of the CDA’s objectives is to sequence the genome of many varieties of date palm, focusing on Ajwa. Together with Rod Wing, Professor of Plant Science and Director of the CDA, the two teams collected date palm samples from the Al Dabeta farm by the Quba mosque in Madinah: home to some of the oldest date palms in the world.