The UAE has one of the world’s most comprehensive plans to address food security, but much can be done to improve its resilience and sustainability. The UAE is considered food secure due to its economic and political stability. As a desert country, lacking in water and arable land, the UAE is facing considerable food security challenges of its own. It mainly results from water scarcity,climate change, hot climate, and regional instability. Long-term food security and self-sufficiency are key strategic goals for the UAE government.

UAE has a hyper arid climate which propels the government to invest in farming technologies favourable for its climate. Recently, the International Centre for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) demonstrated agri-solutions and crops to more than 100 local farmers and representatives from agri-businesses.

The main purpose of the event was to encourage the local farmers to use proven and tested technologies  developed  by ICBA and its partners. Like many countries UAE is also tackling food security and climate issues. Food Security Minister of UAE emphasized upon the need to have advance technologies to tackle such issues especially in climate change resilience. Agro-based technologies will improve the method to produce crops.

The Ministry has dedicated best practices research center exclusively to doing applied research on crops that grow in this saline environment using salt water. The ICBA centre has a revolutionary role in ensuring that the all the challenges to the agricultural output and the climate is addressed efficiently and no individual remains hungry because of food shortage.

Centre for its first two decades focused on species that have been neglected for many years but by default are highly salt-tolerant, climate change resilient, and high in nutrition such as quinoa, pearl millet, and others.

UAE has also partnered with Beijing Genomic Institute of China to look at understanding the genomics of the crops so that better crops can be bred by using molecular technologies. Hybrid quinoa or hybrid millets will be possibly grown through these technologies.

Farmers in UAE are well recognized for their contribution towards stabilizing the food security  as they use advanced technology and grow salt tolerant crops to meet the needs of the growing population.