Saudi Arabian agtech startup Red Sea Farms has raised $1.9 million in funding to advance saltwater-tolerant crops and to build a 2,000 square foot saltwater greenhouse.
As a spin-out company from KAUST, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, the investment was co-led by the KAUST Innovation Fund and Research Products Development Company (RPDC).
As ecological factors such as a lack of water for irrigation, and an arid environment make domestic food production and self-sufficiency challenging for Saudi Arabia, Red Sea Farms’ technology places the company in a key position to affect real change on the food security status of the Kingdom.
Although advances in technology resulted in an increase in food production in the MENA region in the 1990s, the region is still expected to see a food deficit of between 50 million tons and 90 million tons by 2020.
“The Middle East is one of the most water scarce regions of the world,” said Mark Tester, co-founder and KAUST professor of Plant Science. “Here, we often rely on unsustainable sources of water for irrigation, such as groundwater, which is being rapidly depleted, or desalinated water.”
Continued loss of arable land and increasingly scarce natural water resources have long strained Saudi Arabia’s ability to sufficiently produce its own food. And although some may point to desalination as a means to secure the needed water for agricultural production, the minimum cost of $1 per cubic meter has proven prohibitive.
“Desalinated water requires large amounts of energy to produce, which is costly—at least $1 for every cubic meter, and [this] has a high environmental impact,” said Tester.
After building a foundation upon six years of research, KAUST has developed tomatoes that have an unusually high tolerance to salinity, and are able to be grown using up to 30 percent diluted seawater – something that not only greatly lightens the ecological footprint of the operation, but that also produces exceptionally sweet fruit.
“RPDC has a strong track record of bringing technology to market in Saudi Arabia, and [we] look forward to supporting Red Sea Farms as they scale,” said Abdulmohsen Almajnouni, CEO, RPDC. “Red Sea Farms will use this investment to pilot their saltwater greenhouse cooling technology in the Kingdom. It will also enable them to scale-up their crop production of…saltwater tomatoes.”
Concurrently, Red Sea Farms has developed patent pending solutions to grow salt-tolerant crops in greenhouses cooled using saltwater. By replacing between 80 and 90 percent of the freshwater used with saltwater, Red Sea Farms is able to reduce the amount of fresh water and energy needed by tenfold.
“RPDC and KAUST share common interests in commercializing intellectual property and supporting high-tech startups in Saudi Arabia,” said Kevin Cullen, vice president of KAUST Innovation and Economic Development.
“This investment marks a shining example of the transition of KAUST academic research to commercial application, with the potential to revolutionize the future of food production in Saudi Arabia and the region.”
Importantly, Red Sea Farms’ system that allows for evaporative cooling with saltwater can be retrofitted to existing greenhouses, supporting the startup’s aim to retrofit 5 percent of the greenhouses in the Kingdom with the offer to farmers that the system will generate a return on investment in less than two years.
-Lynda Kiernan