Hydrophobic Sand Could Combat Desert Water Shortages

This appears to have tremendous potential for obvious reasons. Too bad it looks like they're more focused on making a buck than helping to solve a serious obstacle in tackling world hunger. Shame! Fortunately it seems other are on the same track, hopefully with more humanitarian goals.

"As DIME engineer Fahd Mohammad Saeed Hareb explains, their idea is to lay a 10-cm layer of waterproof sand beneath desert topsoil. The hydrophobic sand could serve as a water table to stop water from bleeding downward below the plants' roots. Normally, water quickly trickles down through the sand, requiring that farmers water their plants five or six times per day.

With the new layer of hydrophobic sand, farmers would only need to water their plants once per day, decreasing water use by up to 75 percent. Another benefit of the hydrophobic sand is that it prevents underground salt from passing through the plant roots, which can kill the plants...

...As the population increases and rivers run dry, water scarcity is expected to increase over the next decades in desert regions. In the Middle East and North Africa, 85 percent of the water is used for irrigation, so decreasing this requirement could help meet the urban demand and possibly prevent future humanitarian disasters."

LINK