— The Saudi Irrigation Organization and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) signed Wednesday an agreement to strengthen national irrigation management capacities in order to achieve the goals of the National Transformation Program and the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 to raise the efficiency of water use in the field of irrigation. The agreement was signed at the organization’s headquarters in the Saudi governorate of Al-Ahsa. The agreement aims at advisory and technical cooperation to achieve strategic goals, increase the adoption of innovative and effective irrigation techniques and practices, study evaluating the performance of covered agricultural watercourses and compare them with the performance of open ones. It also includes setting of the Saudi code for agricultural irrigation systems, study to evaluate and compare the performance of the organization’s various agricultural canals systems and study ways to find ways, in addition to statistical studies of the irrigation sector in the Kingdom. — SPA