Updated on Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 00:37 IST

Hyderabad, June 23: Israel has made several innovations in water management and irrigation and it could cooperate with India to improve on these lines for development of agriculture here, Israel's Ambassador to India Mark Sofer said on Tuesday.

"Israel is the world's largest producer of milk and has almost perfected the art of using water judiciously for irrigation purpose and also on minimum usage of pesticides for agriculture," Sofer said.

He was addressing a business meet on 'Indo-Israel Opportunities for Trade and Investment' at the Federation House organised by the Federation of Andhra Pradesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry here, a release said.

Since 1992, India has become a major trade partner of Israel and the volume of bilateral trade between India and Israel had grown to about USD 4 billion till 2008, he said.

Sofer said that Israel is keen on investing resources to assist Indian and Israeli companies to forge alliances especially in the areas of Water and Environmental Technologies, Renewable Energy Resources, Home Land Security and Bio-Technology.

Commenting on Renewable Energy Technology, Sofer said Israel is one of the few countries to mandate Solar PV in all its new civil constructions and first in the world to mandate Solar hot-water in the upcoming new buildings of the country.

As a top national priority, Homeland Security in Israel has created a diversified and cutting edge security industry, adding innovation to existing technologies as well as developing new ones, Sofer said.

Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly former Speaker K R Suresh Reddy said Israeli expertise and technology can be emulated and implemented in agriculture here by usage of water resources including drip irrigation.

FAPCCI president K Harishchandra Prasad said both Andhra Pradesh and Israel offer substantial opportunities in the field of agriculture and food-processing, biotech, aerospace and other sectors.

"India and Israel could cooperate in the field of agriculture for increasing agriculture production by adopting latest technology," he said.

AP Tourism Development Corporation chairman Swaranjit Sen also spoke.

Bureau Report