Soil Salinisation and Salt Stress in Crop Production

Abstract

For optimal grow and development, cultivated plants require balanced presence of water and dissolved minerals (salts) in their rhizosphere. In that respect, quality and availability of two natural resources, water and soils, are crucial in cultivation. Although Earth abounds in water, an almost negligible portion (~2.5% or 35 million km3) is fresh or with low salt concentration (<1 dS/m) (Shiklomanov & Rodda, 2003 ; Ondrasek, 2010), i.e. water that may be conditionally used for irrigation in crop production, whereas the rest is salty and therefore unsuitable for irrigation. However, irrigated agriculture consumes ~70% (and >90% in many developing countries) of total water withdrawal to produce ~36% of global food (Howell, 2001). According to recent estimates (ICID, 2009), almost 300 million ha in the world are irrigated, with ~2/3 of that in most populated and the fast growing Asian countries. In many irrigated agricultural areas, especially in developing countries, water scarcity is pronounced because of environmental conditions (e.g. arid and semiarid climate zones) and the rising population (i.e. food demand). As a consequence, there is an increasing trend of innappropriate use of restricted water (e.g. over/pumping of salinised aquifers) and continuous degradation of land resources (e.g. salt-affected soils), representing a large burden to human food supply and natural ecosystems. Some of the most produced and widely used crops in human/animal nutrition such as cereals (rice, maize), forages (clover) or horticultural crops (potatoes, tomatoes) usually require irrigation practices, but are relatively susceptible to excessive concentration of salts either dissolved in irrigation water or present in soil (rhizosphere) solution. In a majority of cultivated plants, yields start declining even at relatively low salinity in irrigation water (ECw>0.8 dS/m) (e.g. Ayers & Westcot, 1994) or soil (ECse>1 dS/m in saturated soil extracts) (see Table 1 in Chinnusamy et al., 2005). Increased soil salinity may induce various primary and secondary salt stress effects in cultivated plants (section 4.3.1). Salt stress as one of the most widespread abiotic constraints in food production may also result in the negative ecological, social and/or economic outcomes. For instance, recent deposition of toxic salt sediments and sea intrusion in tsunami-affected areas of Maldives damaged >70% of agriculture land, destroyed >370, 000 fruit trees and affected around 15, 000 farme…