ABU DHABI - Abu Dhabi is talking caviar on a scale that would make czars blush.

The emirate, already home to the world's first gold-bar automatic teller machine and a Christmas tree so chock-full of jewels it earned a place in the Guinness Book of World Records, has now said it will be host to the world's largest indoor caviar farm. At full production, expected in 2015, the factory will churn out 31 metric tons of the prized fish eggs - more than a quarter of current global production.

Royal Caviar Company makes its home in a low-slung building the size of six soccer fields in the Musaffah industrial area of Abu Dhabi and counts cement factories, rental car depots and distribution companies as neighbors. Yet, inside, organizers say, conditions are even better than the Caspian Sea that sturgeon call home.

"In the wild, sturgeon are available only four months of the year," said Christoph Hartung, chairman of the board of United Food Technologies Group, the German company that is providing the technology for the farm.

"In here, " he added, "it is always summer for the fish."

Perpetual summer has the aesthetic of a laboratory, only the gurgleof flowing water to be herad. The $120 million indoor farm contains 80 tubs, in three sizes, to accommodate the fish from the tiny tadpole-like sturgeon emerging from its egg to the fully grown fish that spans up to three meters and can weigh 7 kilograms.

A computerized monitoring system makes sure temperatures remain between 15 and 20 degrees Celsius, depending on where the fish is in its life cycle. Should anything go awry, a control room in Germany is alerted and text alerts immediately appear on the cell phones of those in Abu Dhabi.

"If you don't have good fish, they will not give you anything," said Muhaned Abu Awad, the plant's production manager. "You have to pamper the fish."

Abu Dhabi'staste for caviar has grown alongside its economic prowess. While Russian and other European expatriates are the biggest customers locally, Emiratis and other Gulf residents are increasingly seeking out the roe, which can cost as much as $9 a gram, as a symbol of their wealth. Royal Caviar also sees its location in the Gulf as a strategic advantage in servicing the the booming appetites for the newly wealthy in Far East markets, especially China.

Demand for the culinary delicacy is estimated to be about 360 metric tons, a year, while current supply is topping at 100 metric tons, according to Royal Caviar.

The move to limit the export of the overfished wild sturgeon from the Caspian Sea in 2006 by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species has created business opportunities for investors in sturgeon farms, even those in the desert.

People associate caviar with affluence, said Pierre El Hakim, marketing manager of Caviar Court, a sturgeon farm in Saudi Arabia. "They buy it to show off," he said, "as a fancy and expensive food item on their tables."

The New York Times