The 13th Liwa Dates Festival opened its doors on Wednesday, July 19th, attracting hundreds of visitors who came to see date farmers, agricultural and heritage companies exhibit their handicrafts, products and services.

As in previous years, the UAE's most popular varieties of dates are entered in the 'Best Dates' competitions, in which farms from all over the country participate. The quality of the dates are judged based on taste, size, look, colour, and health.

Obaid Khalfan Al Mazrouei, Director of the Festival, said, "Over the years, we've noticed farmers made the necessary changes to improve their palm tree orchards, such as cutting down fertilisers, keeping the palm trees disease-free or switching to water efficient irrigation systems. For this reason, we changed the scoring for the dates competition from 50 percent for the dates quality and 50 percent for the farm appearance to 70 percent for the dates quality and 30 percent for the farm appearance."

The festival runs until July 29th.