 Dates and date-growing are an essential part of the heritage of the UAE. The UAE has always been a net exporter of high-quality dates and gives tons of dates to fellow Arab states during the Holy Month of Ramadan. Between 1986 and 1997 the number of date palms in the country increased from under 5 million to over 25 million. Remarkably, labour intensive hand-pollination is the preferred option in almost all farms.
 Date cultivation is a multi-million dollar industry that is pursued scientifically. Under an Offsets project, nearly $1.5 million has been earmarked for development of a joint venture in bio-technology. Advanced tissue culture techniques will be used to clone some 200,000 disease-free palms annually, half of
which are expected to be exported.
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