​The following research topics are currently available at the department:
​Irrigation and recycling of waste water
- Design irrigation systems and recommend suitable irrigation schedules.
- Develop recycling systems to treat waste water.
- Analyze water quality of recycling units and evaluate suitability for irrigation of various crops to prevent pollution and ground water contamination.
- Improve water productivity at the farm level and apply deficit irrigation to conserve water and increase net return per unit of water.
Plant health management
- Explore the biotic and abiotic factors that hinder plants from achieving their full potential as crops, ornamentals, and trees.
- Develop and/or optimize disease detection methods.
- Identify major plant parasitic fungi, bacteria, viruses, nematodes, weeds, insects, and other pests that attack vegetables, field crops, and fruit trees.
- Analyze integrated pest management strategies and disease resistant vegetables.
Conservation agriculture and environmental protection
- Promote no-till or reduced till systems by recommending the use of sustainable machinery to minimize disturbance of soil, maintaining soil cover and rotating crops to increase water infiltration, encouraging biodiversity, and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.
- Study effect of reducing costs and increasing savings in energy and capital to making farming a more profitable enterprise.
Agricultural economics and development
- Research on sustainable development policies in the MENA region.
- Study the agro-food value chain, by exploring issues of price transmission and efficiency of food labels.
- Study the poverty and equity implications of public development policies in the region.
​Animal and Veterinary Sciences
- Sustainable livestock production in semi-arid areas.
- Better animal nutrition (utilization of food by-products, administration of nutritional elements, nutritional evaluation of locally produced crops for poultry under normal and hot climatic conditions, organic feed additives, dietary chelated minerals) to improve animal health conditions and production capabilities.
- Identification and reduction of major contaminants of milk to maintain proper human and animal health conditions.
- Humane molting programs for layers.
- Pathology, immunology, and control of poultry and animal diseases.
- Mutations in zoonotic viruses and relationship to pathogenicity
- Molecular studies on veterinary diseases-etiologic agents and relationship to vaccine developments.
- Immune responses to various vaccines and field strains of economic diseases.
- Livestock-environment and environmental adaptations in animals.