Research continues to underpin Qatar’s development as the nation progresses toward achieving its National Vision for 2030 (QNV 2030).

The country has been focusing on research across various fields to encourage positive economic growth.

In collaboration with the Department of Agricultural Research, Ministry of Municipality and Environment (MME), QU is making efforts to develop Qatar’s first solar agriculture greenhouse funded by Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), National Priority Research Program (NPRP).

For the past 15 years, Qatar witnessed rapid economic and exponential population growth. Thus, the research and development projects of Protected Agriculture are essential for a healthy population and are key to enhance food security.

Commenting on the solar Greenhouse project, Dr. Saud Ghani, lead researcher of Greenhouse project and Professor of Mechanical Engineering at College of Engineering said, “Qatar has set food security as a priority for the country and set out a commitment to sustain about 70% self-sufficiency on greenhouse vegetables.''

''Achieving sustainable food security was further ascertained by the ongoing geopolitical tensions and the imposed blockade on the country. The blockade impeded food imports by land and led stakeholders, such as authorities, organizations and individuals to focus on enhancing local agricultural farming, proposing sustainable food security, various new systems, methods, practices and technologies.”

Greenhouses provide an optimized and controlled growth environment for plants to maximize yield. In subtropical, hot, and arid regions, most of this energy is to cater for the required cooling. Sunlight is necessary for healthy plant growth.

This project has developed a thermally insulated greenhouse that allows the entry of optimum solar radiation levels through negative linear Fresnel lenses located in its roof. The lenses distribute solar radiation over the plant rows.

The performance of the proposed greenhouse in terms of providing the required levels of solar radiation for plant growth and the reduction in cooling load was assessed using ray-tracing simulations, cooling load calculations, and field trials in Nabati farm.

In comparison to a conventional greenhouse, the monthly cooling load of the proposed greenhouse was about 80% less. Therefore, the proposed solar greenhouse can achieve the benefits of a closed greenhouse while overcoming the high cooling demand drawback, in subtropical and arid regions.

The design of the solar greenhouse aims to overcome two identified shortcomings of the conventional greenhouse during the hot season, its highly transparent and conductive structure.

The highly transparent walls of a greenhouse are desired during the winter season where the amount of available solar radiation is relatively low. However, excessive amounts of solar radiation enter the greenhouse during the hot season due to its high transparency. While the conductive nature of the typical greenhouse walls causes undesired heat gain.

Dr. Saud said, ''To overcome the first shortcoming, the entry of sunlight to the greenhouse is only allowed through negative linear Fresnel lenses that are fitted in rows in its roof corresponding to the plants grow lines underneath. The lenses are placed directly above the plants grow rows. They act as a roof mounted lighting system, dispersing sunlight over the plants. The remaining walls of the greenhouse are covered with thermal insulation rolls, thus, overcoming the second shortcoming.'' said 

“The greenhouse prototype is currently under field tests for yield assessments at the Nabati farm in Mekanees, south of Doha. For the last two summers 2018, 2019), the field tests proved very promising and the ministry is looking forward to developing Qatar’s first agriculture greenhouse standards using this prototype as a blueprint,” he added.

Dr. Ali Al-Kharboutli, the consultant to the Agricultural Research Department, MME, said, “The research depends on the use of a number of technologies that are based on the Fourth Industrial Revolution 4.0 and its transformation into an integral part of the agricultural community by developing the greenhouse design, manufacturing, cooling and lighting systems.''

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Source and Cover image Credit: Qatar University