JEDDAH: A team from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology and Al-Hasa-based Palms and Dates Center has been awarded the 2022 International Date Palm Innovative Technology Excellence Prize.

Presented by the National Center for Palm and Dates, the award was made in recognition of the team’s fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensor, which is used in the early detection of red palm weevils in date palm trees.

Tackling infestations of red palm weevils has been a long-standing problem across the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe and other parts of the world.

The winning team comprised Dr. Islam Ashry, Dr. Chun Hong Kang and Prof. Boon S. Ooi from the KAUST Photonics Laboratory and Dr. Yousef Alfehaid and Eng. Abdulmonem Alshawaf from the PDC, which operates under the Ministry of Environment, Water and Agriculture.

As well as the prestige, the team collected SR200,000 ($53,000) in prize money. The award was announced at the 3rd International Dates Conference and Exhibition, which ran from Dec. 7-10 in Riyadh. Their design beat off the challenge of 65 other submissions for the prize.

Ashry said the team was honored to have won such a prestigious award and paid tribute to his colleagues at the Photonics Laboratory and the PDC who helped in the development, testing and deployment of the technology.

“This recognition motivates us to continue improving, optimizing and advancing this technology to a new level,” he said.

According to the NCPD, the event provided “a unique combination of scientific research and commercial strategy to exchange scientific knowledge and innovative technologies to enhance the safe production and commercialization of these extraordinary super-fruits.”

The Kingdom is home to some 33 million date palm trees, producing about 1 million tons of dates a year, or 20 percent of global production. In the Middle East region alone about $8 million is spent every year fighting infestations of weevils.

“Our RPW-detecting technology uses a fiber-optic distributed acoustic sensor,” Ashry said. “It is the first of its kind and offers a more scalable approach (than) other detection methods, such as microphone probe, computer-based tomography and visual inspection.”

Kang said the team’s system used fiber-optic cables wound around individual tree trunks.

“Acoustic signals generated by the weevil larvae inside a trunk can be picked up by the cable and transmitted back to an interrogator system,” he said.

“The collected signals are then analyzed and processed through a machine learning algorithm to identify each tree’s infestation status.”

Ashry and Kang are now working with various organizations within the Kingdom, including the PDC, MEWA, NEOM, the Royal Commission for AlUla and the Tabuk Agricultural Development Co., on the deployment of their technology.

These test applications will help to improve the sensitivity of the sensor systems so they can be used on large-scale farms.

“Our research efforts align well with … Saudi Vision 2030 in terms of diversifying the economy, especially for the date palm sector,” Ashry said.

Ooi said: “Our technology offers a unique and low-cost solution to protect the large number of date palm trees in the country through early infestation detection.”