Managing Saline Irrigation in Horticultural Crops

The principles to produce horticultural crops with marginal-quality irrigation waters are now well understood. Innovative and pertinent management practices help to minimize the effects of salinity stress. Most fruit trees being perennial, longer-term interaction of their roots with salinity increases their sensitivity. The promising trees of saline water irrigated areas are date palm, olive, sapota, guava, Indian jujube (ber), pomegranate, and karonda. Unlike annual crops, a quick shift in agronomic strategies is not possible. Practices put forward to enhance their performance are alleviating salinity at critical stages, shifting to micro-irrigation, using mulching materials, applying bio-stimulants and soil amendments, and nutrient management. For the limited irrigation water conditions, adapting to the deficit irrigation methods like partial root-zone drying has been recommended. Tolerant cultivars and grafting the choice cultivars onto tolerant rootstocks further enable the use of higher-salinity waters. Most vegetables are comparatively more salt-sensitive than the other field crops. Drip irrigation and subsurface drip irrigation are now becoming popular to raise vegetables with saline waters. Growers are usually reluctant to irrigate floricultural plants with saline for fear of jeopardizing economic returns and floral quality. However, highly tolerant floricultural species have been identified to perform better under high irrigation water salinity.