PRESIDENT'S REPORT 2020 | OUR FIRST 50

BGU PRESIDENT'S REPORT 2020

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Yossi  There’s a process of desertification taking place around the world… An enormous number of people suffer from food shortage, from lack of nutrition. The knowledge that is being developed here in this place by the University’s units can provide at least partial solutions to the catastrophes taking place now in different desert areas and in future desert areas around the world. Naftali  All this knowledge being developed here – including technologies related to plants, irrigation, fertilization – we beta test it here in the little State of Israel, and then we export those technologies to other places in the world, to other desert regions. Yossi  And it’s not just technologies. We try to adapt existing crops to the extreme desert conditions we have here, as well as attempt to introduce new crops that can provide food in desert conditions.

Prof. Yossi Mizrahi and Prof. Naftali Lazarovitch Prof. Emeritus Yosef (Yossi) Mizrahi was born in Tel Aviv and has a PhD in botany from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He joined the Negev Institute for Arid Zone Research in 1968. During his career he worked on the domestication of the pitanga and other wild fruit trees as new crops, on new varieties of cherry tomatoes and much more. Prof. Naftali Lazarovitch was born in Rehovot. He has a PhD in soil and water sciences from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and joined the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research in 2006. His research focuses on water flow and solute transport in the soil-plant atmosphere system, including increasing agricultural water use efficiency. Photos: 1 - The Negev Institute for Arid Zone Research, 1958. Photo: Moshe Pridan, courtesy of Government Press Office 2 - Yossi and Naftali make shakshuka 3 - Prof. Yossi Mizrahi checks hothouse tomatoes, 1980s

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Naftali  While producing food, you also protect the soil, ensuring

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