Dubai: A plant grown using salt water is thriving in the UAE's desert farms and helping create ‘healthy’ burgers, showing sustainable agriculture's potential in the toughest conditions.
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Salicornia, a succulent, is already being used as a salt replacement in burger patties - a rare farming success in oil-rich UAE, which imports nearly all of its food.
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"You have the salty flavour with less sodium, but you also have other benefits," said Tina Siegismund, head of marketing and innovation at UAE-based Global Food Industries, a frozen food manufacturer.
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The asparagus-like plant reduces sodium content by 40 per cent in the company's healthy burgers, which also contain chicken, quinoa and kale.
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Native to parts of North America, Europe, South Africa and South Asia, the plant is ideal for the UAE's climate, and contains anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory properties, according to Siegismund.
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Agriculture produces less than 1 per cent of GDP in the UAE, a country on the frontline of climate change with temperatures regularly topping 50 degrees Celsius and rising rapidly.
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A worker prepares a salicornia plant-based mix to be made into burger patties. | Salicornia cultivation began last year in a number of farms across the UAE as part of an experiment using brine run-off from desalination plants by the Dubai-based International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA).
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Augusto Becerra Lopez-Lavalle, chief scientist at ICBA, said research was now underway into generating more of the ‘high-value crop’, which sells for $20 a kilo (2.2 pounds) in France.
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Salicornia plant-based burger patties are produced on a production line. | "We went from building this prototype, to piloting at scale with eight farmers, and now the question is how to scale up," Lopez-Lavalle told AFP.
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In the future, salicornia could "become a really important food ingredient. If there is an economic value and the production system is developed for this, it can become a replacement for salt and any other micronutrients that are added today artificially to processed food."
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Salicornia plant-based burger patties being cooked in a pan. | For now, salicornia remains a niche product, its health benefits unknown to most, admits Siegismund. "It's not a product that makes big, big profit, but we believe in it and we will continue," she said.
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