At the Rome headquarters of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), an Omani youth-led biotechnology company stood on the main stage at the close of the 2026 World Food Forum to claim first place in the ‘Enhancing Climate Resilience and Water Security’ category. Selected from 801 competing startups across 111 countries by a panel of more than sixty international judges, Firdaws Biotechnology proved that an agricultural solution engineered for Oman’s heat and saline groundwater can compete at the highest level of global agritech.
Held under the forum theme ‘Innovate Today.. Nourish Tomorrow,’ the sixth edition of the Youth-Led Startup Innovation Awards recognized four category winners worldwide. For Firdaws co-founder Fahmi Al-Kharusi and his team, the trophy in Rome validated years of laboratory extraction and field trials linking the rich marine biology of the Arabian Sea to drought-stressed farmlands.
Turning Marine Algae and Microbes into a Crop Shield
Firdaws began with a question rooted in Omani farming: as summer temperatures climb, rainfall remains scarce, soil organic matter declines, and coastal aquifers grow increasingly saline, how can farmers protect yields without exhausting their land or budgets? Instead of looking to synthetic chemical inputs, the team turned to Oman’s marine environment.
By extracting bioactive compounds from marine algae and combining them with beneficial rhizosphere microbes, Firdaws formulated organic biostimulants that strengthen plant root architecture and cellular water retention during extreme heat and salt stress. According to co-founder Fahmi Al-Kharusi, the resulting formulations have outperformed commercial products from major multinational agrochemical producers while costing farmers just one-fifth—twenty percent—of the price of competing treatments.
22% Higher Yields in the California Desert and US University Trials
To prove that its Omani-developed biotechnology works across diverse soils and climate zones, Firdaws subjected its formulas to independent trials in the United States. In a commercial field study on lettuce grown under high-temperature stress in the California desert, crops treated with Firdaws’s marine biostimulant recorded a twenty-two percent increase in marketable yield compared to standard controls.
Parallel academic trials on soybean crops were conducted across three leading American agricultural research institutions: Pennsylvania State University, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Missouri. Across those university test plots, the Omani formulations consistently outperformed benchmark treatments, backing multiple patent applications currently in progress.
Backed by the Oman Future Fund for Global Export
The Rome victory caps a steady sequence of international milestones for the Omani enterprise. Firdaws previously advanced to the top eight finalists at the MassChallenge accelerator in Lausanne, Switzerland, earned both the UNDP Blue Innovation Award and the AgriNext Innovation Award in 2024, and won the Island Innovation Sustainable Companies Award in 2022.
Backed by a strategic investment from the Oman Future Fund through venture firm Cypher Capital, Firdaws is now transitioning from research validation into commercial-scale manufacturing and international export. Following the award ceremony in Rome, officials at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization expressed their readiness to expand technical collaboration with Firdaws inside the Sultanate—turning an Omani seaweed innovation into a practical tool for water-scarce farming around the world.
