Published by IsraelAgri.com

According to the World Bank, the most critical challenge of the 21st century is feeding a world population that by 2050 is projected to reach 9.7 billion.
Since agriculture accounts for 70% of the world’s water consumption, anything that can optimise water usage and reduce current day wastage, can only be beneficial.
Integrated water management on a transboundary scale, in conjunction with cutting edge irrigation technology will go a long way to alleviating hunger and its attendant diseases worldwide, and make farmers more prosperous.

In anticipation of the twentieth Agritech exhibition, to be held in Tel Aviv in early May, we spoke to the CEOs of four major irrigation companies that have deep roots in Israel. In order to discover how each of their firms deals with international irrigation challenges, and to get a sense of their visions for the future, we asked each of them the same two questions.

First Question: How does your company strike a balance between the traditional methods used by most farmers and the precision agriculture you make available?

Amnon Ofen, Director NaanDanJain
The irrigation companies that developed in Israel lead and contribute much to global agricultural development because, Amnon says, of Israel’s history of being a small country in which collaboration among all four branches of its agriculture – the farmer, technological production systems, R&D and professional field services, was mutually supportive.

Most of the world’s farmers work in developing countries and find it hard to use modern technology. They are mainly smallholders in remote regions with an acre of land, sometimes less. Irrigation companies must provide them with the game changing resources and the knowhow.

NaanDanJain together with its parent company, Jain Irrigation, offer the most extensive line of irrigation solutions in the world. They developed the One Stop Agro Shop model, designed to provide smallholders with added value from planning, through seeds, saplings and nutrients, modern irrigation systems, pipes and water supply to the smallholding, agronomical knowhow, purchasing crops and processing them into food.

Sustainable agriculture is maintained by recycling production materials and turning them into biofuel.
The companies have developed an integrated holistic concept for turnkey regional agro projects, mainly for smallholders, called ‘From Resource to Root’.
The company is currently finishing the largest drip irrigation project anywhere in the world. It is located in India; it covers 12,300 hectares and encompasses more than 7000 farmers. All systems are fully automated.
Precision agriculture technology forms part of NaanDanJain’s service to the individual farmer. The company’s size allows it to reduce costs to the farmer.

Shmuell Schupak, CEO Metzer
Farmers are the weakest link in the agricultural value chain: they bear most of the risk while reaping a small part of benefits (most benefits go to the intermediaries). For this reason Metzer focuses on providing robust and reliable technologies that work under real field conditions and are easy to operate with the manpower available to the farmers.

Our motto is “help the farmer increase his benefits”, at a time in which not all the fancy solutions that might appear promising in the laboratory deliver under prolonged use on site. Being farmers ourselves definitely helps to understand these constraints, so we design and produce goods according to them.

Ran Maidan, CEO Netafim
With its purpose of helping the world to grow more with less, Netafim is innovating to develop solutions for all farmers – from the most advanced agriculture cooperatives to smallholder farmers in developing countries.
While it is clear that sophisticated farmers tend to adopt technologies that maximize their results, addressing the needs of the traditional and small farmers to help them upscale their capabilities and output can be more challenging.
To do so, Netafim invests in developing markets such as Africa and Asia, and adjusts the Go-To-Market models to reach this population. For example, we implemented in Karnataka State in India, together with the local government, the largest drip irrigation project in the world, covering ~7,000 small farmers. A different model is working with governments that provide subsidies to farmers and promote the adoption of efficient farming practices.
Netafim also has global partnerships with leading companies that share the same purpose. Only last month we launched the “Better Life Farming” alliance, together with organizations such as Bayer, IFC and SwissRe, to unlock the potential of smallholder farmers together.
On the products’ front, Netafim solutions are tailored to the farmers needs. We are currently launching a new, first of its kind, Digital Farming system that includes cost effective solutions for small farmers.

Richard Klapholz CEO Rivulis
A majority of our products are made for traditional drip irrigation users. These are the markets we serve because this is what our customers, the famers around the world, need. While the benefits of Precision Agriculture are proven, the parameters of cost and complexity have so far not allowed it to become a global standard. This is why we launched the Manna Irrigation Intelligence service at Agritech 2018. Manna provides irrigation intelligence software-based solutions to growers around the world and helps them make better informed, more confident, data-driven irrigation decisions. Our approach is simple (no need to install equipment of any kind, no maintenance, no upfront set-up costs) and cost-effective (based on an attractive annual subscription fee). With tens of thousands of hectares already covered in multiple countries and with over a decade of investment and experience, we are enabling Precision Agriculture around the globe. The balance that we strike is through our unique combination of field-proven innovative drip irrigation solutions and the Manna Irrigation Intelligence service: both of which are now possible together.

Secound Question: How do you, personally, envisage global agriculture addressing the challenge of feeding an ever-increasing population?

Amnon Ofen, Director NaanDanJain
Most of the world still uses traditional and highly inefficient flood irrigation. It wastes precious water and nutrients. The only viable solution is micro-drip irrigation, which delivers both water and nutrients together (known as fergitation) and can double yields.
Advanced irrigation techniques will require knowhow, artificial intelligence technology, satellite and UAV imagery, sensors and monitors for highly accurate fergitation instructions. They will also facilitate early problem analysis and drastically reduce agriculture’s inherent uncertainty.
Greenhouse crops will become increasingly prevalent, thus absolving the farmer from the vagaries of weather and dependence upon rainfall.
Only companies as large as NaanDanJain that place the farmer at the top of the pyramid can provide added value by making him a member of a cooperative that help him cut costs and develop modern markets, while providing a strong backing against marketers and large-scale market forces.
Global warming and its attendant water shortages will force farmers around the world to adopt water saving methods such as the drip irrigation for which NaanDanJain provides leadership. As we say, ‘leave the world better than you found it’.

Shmuell Schupak, CEO Metzer
The technology to feed the world’s population even with water and fertile land limitations already exists. The challenge for the near future is to do it while preserving the delicate ecological balance, working with nature and not against it. Reusing effluent water, for example, producing more with limited amounts of water as in sub-surface drip irrigation, are examples of technologies we are promoting and can help achieve this goal. Easily recyclable and even compostable irrigation driplines are a must for the future of sustainable farming and Metzer is also investing considerable resources in this direction.

Ran Maidan, CEO Netafim
It is clear that the need for more food and sustainable production will be the most acute challenges the world will have to address. To deal with these, there needs to be a revolutionary change in how we grow food, and use our land and water more efficiently.
Farming by nature is a traditional business that is slow to adopt new technologies. but I believe that with generation change, and as technology is becoming more accessible and affordable – more and more farmers will make this change, including the adoption of digital solutions that will help them grow much more with much less.
When I travel the and see the impact that Netafim technology has brought to the lives of the farming families in India, Asia and Africa, and see the large scale projects we have introduced to many markets and the way it has impacted the overall economic situation in the area, I am filled with pride.

Richard Klapholz CEO Rivulis
As the head of Rivulis, a company that has offered field-trusted innovation since 1966, and knowing the innovation we have in the pipeline, I am confident that the latest agricultural methods will offer even higher yields and increased crop quality.  Most of our innovation efforts are focused on making micro-irrigation more accessible to more growers around the world. We know that the methods we offer today significantly increase yields (often by 30% but in some cases also by 100%). Newer methods, with a higher ability to apply variability, and a wider use of modern agriculture by farmers, will have a cumulative effect enabling exponential growth in food production. I am very optimistic and do not believe that ‘feeding the population’ will be one of the top 10 global challenges in the 21st century.

Published by Israel21c

Israeli seeds are prized everywhere for growing tomatoes that taste better, last longer, resist disease and pack a stronger nutritional punch.

Next time you chop some luscious red tomatoes into your salad or sauce, you can thank Israeli scientists.

Tomatoes didn’t originate in Israel, but our agricultural wizards transformed this wild fruit into a flavorful, long-lasting, nutritious, disease-resistant commercial crop enjoyed everywhere as a fresh ingredient and as a source of healthful extracts.

“Regarding tomatoes, Israel is a powerhouse in breeding and development of knowledge,” says noted researcher Ilan Levin, head of the Plant Sciences Institute at the Volcani Center-Agricultural Research Organization.

“Based on the interest of multinational companies in our work, I assume we are among the leading sources of knowledge about tomatoes.”

In 2013 (the latest year for which figures are available), Israel produced 421,000 tons of tomatoes. But more significant than the fruit are Israeli tomato seeds, highly prized across the world for the traits they were painstakingly bred to carry.

“We develop seeds that cost more per ounce than gold, and they depend on local knowledge,” says tomato expert Prof. Haim D. Rabinowitch of the Hebrew University’s Institute of Plant Science and Genetics in Agriculture. “Seeds are knowledge. Everything I know is embedded in the DNA of the seed.”

At the conclusion of US National Tomato Month (October), ISRAEL21c brings you six fascinating facts about Israeli tomato innovations of the past, present and future.

1. The truth about cherry tomatoes

Is there any truth to the cliché that Israel invented the cherry tomato?

We asked the man known as one of the “fathers” of the cherry tomato: the aforementioned Prof. Rabinowitch of Hebrew University.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Rabinowitch and Prof. Nachum Kedar (now deceased) caused a global revolution with the very first extended shelf-life tomatoes. Next, they used genetic knowhow to reinfuse the wonderful flavor and aroma of tomatoes that had been lost through earlier breeding programs for disease resistance and heirloom traits.

And then they set their sights on the coin-sized cherry tomato, originally a South American weed. It was domesticated up until then primarily as a European and American backyard plant.

“Cherry tomatoes were tasteless and had no shelf life, so they couldn’t be made into a commodity until Nachum Kedar and I introduced better breeding for flavor and long shelf life,” Rabinowitch tells ISRAEL21c.

This breakthrough made the cherry tomato mass-marketable in the Western world for the first time in history.

These Israeli scientists also introduced cluster cherry tomatoes that are picked like bunches of grapes, because picking single cherry tomatoes is slow, expensive and labor-intensive.

2. Love that lycopene

Along with vitamins and minerals, tomatoes contain lycopene, the carotenoid phytonutrient that makes them red.

Lycopene is a powerful antioxidant beneficial for the heart, blood pressure, prostate, bones and skin. Our bodies absorb lycopene best when we eat tomatoes mixed with something oily, like olive oil or cheese.

The multinational company Lycored was founded in Beersheva in 1995 to produce lycopene-rich oil from extracts of locally grown tomatoes.

Today, Lycored sells natural colorings and extracts in North America, Europe and Asia for dietary supplements and health indications, sourced from tomatoes grown in Israel and California using Israeli seeds.

Lycored CEO Rony Patishi-Chillim tells ISRAEL21c that the company worked with Hebrew University scientists to cultivate a unique variety of non-GMO tomatoes with higher lycopene content using genes identified at the Volcani Center.

The company has sponsored ongoing studies at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev to reveal the benefits of tomatoes alone and in combination with, for example, rosemary or olive oil.

Newest research indicates that health-enhancing effects may come from the synergism of various elements of the tomato, not lycopene alone. “We are now specializing in carotenoids in general, of which lycopene is one,” says Patishi-Chillim.

Lycored is experimenting with varieties such as golden tomatoes, which contain phytonutrients that protect skin from UV radiation. “We may combine them with typical tomatoes or use them as a standalone,” she says.

3. Pamper your face with tomato

Frutarom Industries is another multinational Israeli company making good use of tomato science.

The flavors and fragrances giant recently introduced PhytoflORAL, a pure tomato powder-derived ingredient ready to be put in capsules, chewable tablets, drinks or pre-mix sachets meant to improve skin health and tone.

The patented cosmeceutical product — composed of a proprietary derivative of non-GMO tomatoes rich in the colorless carotenoids phytoene and phytofluene — was developed at Israeli Biotechnology Research, a company acquired by Frutarom last February.

Clinical data show that ingested carotenoids accumulate in the skin, delivering protection against oxidative damage and sun exposure, as well as brightening and evening out the complexion, inhibiting the development of age spots and reducing inflammation and DNA damage.

4. Cracking the code of a tomato virus

For the past three decades of its nearly 100-year existence, the Volcani Center has focused on pre-breeding research that has become internationally renowned.

“We look for positive traits such as disease resistance and use genomics and bioinformatics to develop very efficient ways to introduce these traits into elite cultivars,” says Levin. “Then we give the information to the seed companies to produce elite tomatoes resistant to diseases.”

International seed companies, some of which have R&D centers in Israel, make use of Israeli discoveries to enhance tomato flavor, nutritional profile and disease resistance.

For instance, Volcani researchers identified tomato genes that contain more fructose than glucose. “Fructose tastes twice as sweet as glucose,” Levin explains.

Levin and fellow Volcani scientist Moshe Lapidot are generating industry buzz for their research on cultivars resistant to the tomato brown rugose fruit virus (TBRFV), which is fast spreading across the world. TBRFV does not affect human health but it causes a 50% reduction in yield and the infected tomatoes are unattractive.

They discovered a new source of resistance and are also identifying the gene that controls TBRFV resistance, says Levin.

5. Keeping pests off tomatoes without chemicals

Agriculture experts are constantly looking for ways to keep insects and pathogens away from crops while reducing the need for chemical sprays.
One strategy is to breed varieties that resist certain diseases.

“We incorporate eight to 10 different genes in all today’s tomatoes that give them a built-in resistance mechanism so you don’t have to control the pathogens with chemicals. But there are still more pests than resistances,” Rabinowitch tells ISRAEL21c.

Other Israeli methods to keep bugs off tomato plants include dense netting; sticky yellow and blue plates (these colors attract insects); and a particular shade of blue light to prevent a specific mildew.

“There are many tricks in our book,” says Rabinowitch. “But some insects, bacteria and fungi survive the chemical warfare, and viruses cannot be controlled by pesticides. So we try to load the tomato varieties with many genes for resistance.”

6. Helping tomatoes survive climate change

Tomato scientists like Levin and Rabinowitch are very troubled by the looming effects of global warming.

“If you pick a mature, green ripe tomato and put it on your counter at room temperature, it will turn red. But if you put it in an incubator at a temperature above 30 degrees [Celsius] it will never turn red because that’s above the maximum temperature for the biosynthetic process of lycopene [the tomato’s red pigment],” says Rabinowitch.

If the surrounding temperature is above 29, a tomato flower will neither develop properly nor set fruit. And even slight increases in temperature vastly accelerate the lifecycle of insects.

Accordingly, Israeli researchers are developing tomato seeds that withstand extreme heat and other problems caused by climate change, such as increased carbon dioxide levels and higher water salinity.
Because pests constantly mutate and new pollutants appear, this line of work will be keeping Israeli tomato scientists busy for many years to come.