Water used ‘to the last drop’

An aerial view of a palm grove next to salt flats at the Aravah valley in the Negev desert near Israel’s southern Red Sea port city of Eilat. — AFP

IN the scorching summer heat, an Israeli farmer tends to a dripline taking a mix of ground and recycled water to palm trees - an approach honed for decades in the arid country and now drawing wide interest abroad.

At the plantation in a desert near Eilat, a coastal holiday resort on Israel’s southern tip, the mineral-rich water passes through a plastic tube, nourishing the dates high above.