Solar-powered desalination of brackish water with nanofiltration membranes for intensive agricultural use in Jordan, the Palestinian Authority and Israel

Agriculture is a major source of livelihood for many rural communities in the Middle East, despite the severe lack of freshwater that affects the region. Brackish groundwater aquifers are often exploited as sources of irrigation water, but the practice is highly unsustainable, as large volumes of water are needed to leach the salts from the soil. The ongoing AGRISOL project aims at designing, developing and testing a cost-effective desalination system for application at farm-scale to the production of irrigation water and high value crops in semi-arid environments. The AGRISOL project aims at advancing more sustainable, high-technology farming practices by developing a cost-effective desalination system for application at farm-scale to the production of irrigation water and high value crops in semi-arid environments and experimentally testing its potential to (1) reduce the current rates of groundwater abstraction, (2) increase current agricultural yields, and (3) enhance farmers' overall wellbeing by enlarging their currently available portfolio to cash crops with low salinity tolerance.