Red Sea Farms Raises $1.9m to Grow Tomatoes in the Desert Using Saltwater

Red Sea Farms, a Saudi Arabian startup developing saltwater-tolerant crops and saltwater-based greenhouses in the Middle East, has secured $1.9 million in funding.

The startup raised funding to build a 2,000 square meter saltwater greenhouse in Saudi Arabia comes from the country’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Innovation Fund and the Research Products Development Company (RPDC).

Building on six years of research at KAUST, Red Sea Farms is planning to produce 50 tons of tomatoes a year, starting in 2020. The tomatoes, which have high salinity tolerance, will be grown in up to 30% diluted seawater.

In addition to saving on freshwater requirements, Red Sea Farms say their production system makes the fruits exceptionally sweet, with high levels of vitamins and antioxidants.

The company’s ‘patent-pending system’ is also designed to be retrofitted into existing greenhouses to allow evaporative cooling with saltwater, to save freshwater. In this context, the company is aiming to retrofit 5% of Saudi Arabia’s greenhouses with the offer of a return on investment for farmers of less than two years.

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