ICID Webinar on Water Management in Saline Agriculture

Crop production and food security in arid and semi-arid regions are hindered by the scarcity of fresh and good quality water for irrigation. Therefore, it is often necessary to use lower quality water to meet crop water requirements. In many parts of the world, at a dramatically increasing pace, soil salinity and low drainage capacity have become major factors limiting crop yield, depressing agricultural water productivity. Saline water, very often, is the only available resource. It may be accessible as agricultural drainage water, brackish groundwater or also as sea water due to intrusion near coastal areas. Hence, it is more and more important to provide guidelines and suggest management standards in order to minimize the adverse effect of saline water on soils and plants.

The objective of the Webinar is, on the one hand, the understanding of the most important aspects regarding salinity and the role that advanced soil management and irrigation techniques can play in ensuring food security in such areas; some of the key aspects of the discussion will be thus focused on the practice of irrigation with brackish or saline waters, as well as innovative approaches and solutions in managing them. On the other hand, aim of the Webinar is to propose cost-effective and suitable solutions for the amelioration of the given conditions, besides suggesting measures to enhance water productivity in these areas. The suggested approaches and measures are usually based on field trials conducted both under farmer’s field and research station experiences.

The dialogue will bring together irrigation experts, researchers, Government officials and service providers from different areas of the world, to showcase solutions and tools provided by their experience. Under the unprecedented challenging conditions brought to the World by the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more attention is needed on how local food production can be enhanced by utilizing low-quality water and land resources, such as in salt-affected soils.

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