Can you irrigate with salt water

This is why symptoms of high salt damage are similar to those from high moisture stress:. If water is sprayed directly on leaves, it can cause salt scorch and leaf damage even at lower salinities. Irrigation water is only moderately saline, but if it contains high concentrations of specific ions, it can still damage the crop. There will be some variation in how salinity affects the plant, depending on crop, variety, rootstock, leaching ability of the soil and also method of irrigation spray, drip or furrow.

See How salinity is measured. If you have a regular irrigation water salinity problem, you must have a meter for monitoring salinity levels. Small hand-held meters are readily available at reasonable cost.

Calibrate meters against a known buffer solution at least twice each season, as all meters tend to drift in accuracy over time. This calibration is a simple procedure: the meter should come with instructions for this. The main method of reducing the effect of saline water is to apply extra water to leach salts below the rootzone. At this rate, unless leaching and drainage occurs, soil salinity may quickly increase to unsustainable levels.

Leaching often occurs with rainfall. In other cases, irrigation water beyond the crop's water requirement may need to be applied. The extra irrigation water needed to leach salts is termed the leaching fraction , and this can be calculated for various crops and soil types.

Note on drainage : If you apply additional leaching water, you must have good subsoil drainage to ensure the leached saline water can regularly be removed from the soil. Christopher Gasson from Global Water Intelligence magazine says that the competition was a three-way tie last year but this year, the winner stood out.

Already This system will help a lot. Search Events Jobs Consulting. There are many applications but very few for food production. Under an arid climate sustainable agriculture with high production of crops per surface area is always only achievable with nonsaline conditions. On the long run it pays more to spend additional costs to maintain sustainable irrigation and leaching systems to keep salinity of soil low.

Basic facts and ecological principles on climate, aridity and salinity, on ecophysiological behaviour of plants to salinity and defi nition of halophyte-types, on salt balance in ecosystems, in soils and fi elds, on saline agriculture and crop yield as well as on sustainable agriculture with seawater at specifi c sites are discussed with the help of often-heard statements, relevant answers and take-home messages are supplied.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF. Skip to main content. This service is more advanced with JavaScript available. Advertisement Hide. Authors Authors and affiliations S. Keywords Birjand-Declaration drainage drylands greening deserts halophytes phytomelioration, salinity. This is a preview of subscription content, log in to check access. Abu-Zeid M Egyptian policies for using low quality water for irrigation.

Albert R Halophyten. Ulmer, Stuttgart, pp 33— Google Scholar. In other cases, the youngest leaves may appear yellow, or the crop may show signs of wilting, even though the soil appears adequately moist. Plant roots take up moisture through membranes in root cells by osmosis. Water passes through a semi-permeable membrane, and moves from a solution of low levels of dissolved salts to one with higher salts.

This process continues until the plant cells become full. If the irrigation water is moderately saline, the plant has to work harder to absorb water from the soil and growth is slowed, with reduced yields. If highly saline irrigation water is used, the process of osmosis can reverse. Where the solution outside the plant roots is higher in salt concentration than that of the root cells, water will move from the roots into the surrounding solution. The plant loses moisture and suffers stress.

This is why symptoms of high salt damage are similar to those of high moisture stress. Excessive concentrations of sodium and chloride ions in irrigation water can cause toxicities in plants.

These ions can be taken up either by the roots or by direct contact on the leaves. More damage is caused by direct absorption through the leaves. Typical sodium toxicity symptoms are leaf burn, scorch and dead tissue along the outside edges of leaves.

In contrast, the symptoms of chloride toxicity occur initially at the extreme leaf tip. High concentrations of sodium in irrigation water can induce calcium and potassium deficiency in soils low in these nutrients, and crops may respond to fertilisation with these nutrients. Another effect of sodium is that if sodium is high in relation to calcium and magnesium, waterlogging may result due to the degradation of well-structured soils.

The direct toxic effects of sodium concentrations in irrigation water on different plants are shown in Table 1, which lists the effect of the sodium absorption ratio SAR of the irrigation water.

The SAR measures the relative percentage of sodium ions in water to calcium and magnesium ions. A high SAR indicates there is potential for sodium to accumulate in the soil. This can degrade soil structure by breaking down clay aggregates, which results in waterlogging and poor plant growth.

The chloride ion can be taken up by plant roots and accumulate in the leaves. Excessive accumulation may cause burning of the leaf tips or margins, bronzing and premature yellowing of the leaves. In general, most fruit trees are sensitive to chloride, whereas most vegetable, forage and fibre crops are less sensitive.

Table 2 shows the tolerance of some crops to chloride damage by root uptake. Crops, and even varieties and rootstocks, vary greatly in their tolerances to chloride and sodium.

If irrigation water has a total salinity close to the critical concentration, then test its chloride and sodium concentrations. Chemical analysis of soil or leaves can be used to confirm probable chloride toxicity. Fruit leaves usually suffer from toxicity when the dried leaves contain more than 0.

Some crops which are not sensitive to root uptake of chloride or sodium ions develop symptoms of leaf burn when sprinkled with saline water. Damage is most severe during hot dry conditions because evaporation concentrates the salts on leaf surfaces.