It's a long way to go to see a Sturt's Desert Pea!

After 11 years you can see how different salinity levels effect plant growth

Behind us are some the palms growing in fresh water.

I was up early to catch a bus south to Yotvata to meet up with Efi Tripler (love that name) at the Arava Centre for Agriculture Water Use Research.

Efi has been running a long term trial with saline water on date palms for 11 years. They are all in giant pots attached to lysimeters (measure water use). This trial shows how much saline water can affect even salt tolerant plants like date palms. I'll let the photos do the talking.

There are a lot of veggies grown out here in the desert, water is a problem but there is very little disease because nothing can survive getting across the desert to infect their crops.

Efi had a commercial flower trial at the centre and I got a kick out of seeing an Australian plant growing there, a Sturts Desert Pea. Apparently they are quite salt tolerant and almost bullet proof. I had to laugh, I've travelled through the desert country of central Australia years ago and never got to see one and here it is in Israel.

You've got to go a long way to see Sturt's Desert Pea!

Out and about in the Negev

Salt tolerant Sea Aster had a nice taste

Uri Na'amati pulled up out the front of my hotel in Beer Sheva for what turned out to be a great day.

Uri is president of the Field Crop Growers Association (FCGA) which has around 300 members representing over 200,000 ha. Talking to Uri I learnt no one owns land here, it's leased from the Israel government for up to 49 years. The average family land holding in the Negev desert area is around 8 ha but they typically come together to form a community called a Kibbutz and pool their resources. The average Kibbutz out here is 960 ha which surprised me after travelling through the Middle East where I became accustomed to most farms being 1-2 ha.

Uri took me out to the Ramat Negev Agroresearch Centre and we caught up with Zion Shemer (Director). Ramat has some interesting stuff going on with growing crops with saline water.   

Zion with a novel way to grow stawberries 

Strawberries are easy to pick at sholder height

They have been concentrating on trials for human consumption crops that can handle some salt. We looked at some salt bush, portulaca, salicornia and a very tasty plant called sea aster. All of these were being looked at for salad mixes. The sea aster was very nice and had a less salty taste compared with all the other crops there. I think the natural salty taste of these plants would complement a conventional salad. Zion also took us in to see an innovative strawberry growing system that kept the fruit up off the ground.

One of Uri's desal plants

We had lunch at Uri's Kibbutz which was brilliant and checked out his desalination plant and water storage which was very impressive and has to be the biggest plastic lined dam I've seen with a capacity of 1600 megalitres. As you would imagine water is in demand out in a desert and nearly 80% of the water used for irrigation here is recycled waste water from the major cities like Tel Aviv and it's all delivered to farm via pressurised pipe at around 6 bar. They have a time schedule for irrigation to avoid losing pressure.  

 

  

Better than average tomatoes

Eli in one of Zeraim Gedera's net houses

Getting on a bus in Israel can be an interesting experience if you're not use to seeing lots of guns. Nearly everyone here has done military service and most of the young teenagers who have finished school and doing their military training seem to get on with their weapons slung over their shoulder. At times nearly 2/3rds of the passengers are carrying a machine gun of one type or another. Pity the fool who would attempt to hijack a bus here.

The black tomatoes that I couldn't stop eating

Back in Beersheba I met up with Dubi Raz (Agronomy Director for Netafim) who helped me out for much of my trip. He set up a meeting to go out to Zeraim Gedera's net houses where they develop new lines of tomatoes for their international markets. Zeraim Gedera is now part of Syngenta which seems to be a trend in agriculture for chemical companies to invest in plant genetics.   

I have to say some of the best tasting tomatoes I have ever eaten have been in Israel but the best of all were on this visit. There was an amazing array of different types and colours all tailor made for specific markets to places like Spain and Brazil. The guy responsible for these better than average tomatoes is plant specialist Eli Yehoshua who kindly showed me around. All the plants are grafted and he had some salt tolerant lines that looked good. I fell in love with a black tomato that he developed and couldn't stop eating the things. I left with a bag full and a big smile on my face.

Later that day Dubi took me out to Netafims factory where our drip tube was made for us over 27 years ago. I've got to thank Netafim for the opportunity to walk through their plant and see the advances in design since those days. There's a lot to making a drip than just putting a hole in a pipe.

A visit to the holy city of Jerusalem

A constant line of people feed in and out of the famous Dome of the Rock

As my contacts were tied up for a few days, I took a tour up to the very famous city of Jerusalem.

We did all the classics, the room of the last supper, walked the stations of the cross, visited Mary's tomb, the wailing wall and the dome of the rock. I never realised just how close all of these sites are to one another. One of the amazing things I saw that day was in the Garden of Gethsemane where thousand year old olive trees reside. I never new they could live so long. It is also the site of the Church of Nations where Jesus prayed after the last supper before he was arrested by the Romans and crucified. All in all a very interesting day.

Inside the beautiful Church of Nations

Tel Aviv

I flew into Tel Aviv, Israel, late at night and with a Syrian visa in my passport I had a 3 hour wait while security checked me out. This was the last leg of my Nuffield study travel.

A walk through some of the nearby markets here found me trying out pomegranate juice (good salt tolerance) which was delicious. The fresh produce was very good with one store having 5 different types of tomatoes that I found interesting. Tel Aviv reminded me of the Gold Coast in Australia with the city hard up against the beach.

I caught a bus down to Beersheba and went out to the Gilat Agriculture Centre to meet up with Alon Bengali. Alon, like so many researchers on salinity, use lysimeters to measure how much water a plant uses under various degrees of salinity. They are basically giant pots and in this case they had olives growing out of them. Unforunately, Alon was very busy and after the usual chat about saline water it was time to go.

At the end of the day I dropped in to see a memorial park for the Australian Light Horse. 

 

Damascus, a city of treasures

My last few days in Syria were spent in Damascus. I spent some time in the old city souk which was full of spices and all things that sparkle. Entering through one of the giant gateways that completed the fortified walls that encircle the citadel you encounter an amazing network of streets, weaving and uneven, twisted by the centuries. There are many alley ways full of stores selling all manner of things and I spent a whole day just wondering around. Like much of the Middle East, a buildings exterior doesn't always convey some of the gems that are hidden behind its walls. Many of these old buildings hide courtyards that are now popular guest houses. There are many religious sites (both Christian and Muslim) as well. History is measured in thousands of years; an antique here is hundreds of years old, anything less than that is just old.

The amazing city of Palmyra

Temple of Bell

After Rasafa my driver took me out to Palmyra. There's a lot to see among the ruins there. Palmyra would have been quiet amazing when it was at its finest. The stone columns and archways that line the streets here are still impressive and you get a sense of the grandeur this once busy city would have possessed. 

The Temple of Bell is a masons dream and, although weathered now, this large imposing temple still displays some beautiful stone carvings atop the giant columns that adorn the courtyard and the temple itself. You have to marvel at the size of each circular block that sit one on top of another, meters high and wonder how much blood, sweat and tears went in to building this place. I visited the Tower Tombs and the Ba'alshamin Temple which I loved. The temple is very old (2^nd century) and is the temple to the god of heavens, storms and fertilising rains. Just the thing for the farm; no wonder a tree now grows inside its walls.

Palmyra's famous column lined streets leading into the city from the Temple of Bell

Ba'alshamin Temple

Overlooking the whole place is a distant crusader castle. My time ran out and my driver had to get me to Damascus. Maybe one day I'll get back to take a closer look.