The Arab Organization for Agricultural Development (AOAD) participated in the Second International Festival of the Jordanian Dates on Wednesday, 16/10/2019, in Jordan. The festival was inaugurated by the Minister of Agriculture and Environment H.E Ibrahim Al Shahahda, who represented His Majesty King Abdullah II Bin Al Hussein the sponsor of the festival, in the presence of Mr. Ahmed Ali Mohammed Al Bulooshi, the UAE Ambassador to Jordan, and Dr. Abdul Wahab Zayed, the Secretary General of Khalifa International Date Palm Award for and Agricultural Innovation.

The festival's activities included a scientific symposium in which more than twenty scientific and academic researchers discussed all the issues related to palms, challenges, diseases, marketing issues, the development of value chains for dates, especially the (Majhool) and the (Barhi) types of dates and the latest in this field. The winners of the international competitions which were announced earlier were honored in order to support entrepreneurship, encourage innovation and create a spirit of competition to improve product quality and raise the added value.

 It is worth mentioning that the Second International Festival of the Jordanian Dates was organized by the Khalifa International Date Palm Award for and Agricultural Innovation in cooperation with the Jordanian Ministry of Agriculture and Environment and the Jordanian Society of Dates, in addition to many international, regional and national organizations working in this field such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), the Arab Organization for Agricultural Development AOAD, the International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA), Date Palm Global Network (DPGN) and the Date Palm Friends in the UAE (DPFS).