38 / SEEDWORLD.COM JUNE 2017 STRATEGY A featured segment designed to share business- critical information to seed-selling professionals. Visit SeedWorld.com to download this department and other tools. Exploring Solutions to High Saline Soils When it comes to helping farmers manage soil salinization, companies look to everything from breeding and traits to seed treatments, and from the use of microbials to electromagnetically charged water. Julie Deering WATER IS ESSENTIAL to a seed’s ability to germinate and all aspects of crop pro- duction. One of many abiotic stressors that some farmers must deal with is soil salini- zation, which is the process by which water-soluble salts accumulate in the soil. These excess salts limit a crop’s ability to take up water and hinder growth. BASF’s Mike Hofer, direc- tor of Seed Solutions for Functional Crop Care, says that abiotic stressors can play a big part when it comes to yield. Farmers often plant into soils that are too wet, too dry or have high salinity, he says. There are a number of reasons why farmers might witness soil salinization in their fields. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, soil salinization occurs where there’s the combined presence of soluble salts (sulfates of sodium, calcium and magnesium in the soil), a high water table, a high rate of evaporation and low annual rainfall. A fact sheet, “Soil Quality Resource Concerns: Salinization,” provides the following: “In semiarid areas, salinization often occurs on the rims of depressions and edges of drainage ways, at the base of hillslopes, and in flat, low-lying areas surrounding sloughs and shallow bodies of water. These areas receive additional water from below the surface, which evaporates, and the salts are left behind on the soil surface.” Another reason for soil salinization is summer fallow management practices, which increases soil moisture con- tent to the point that water moves to seeps on hillslopes, and salts accumulate as the water evaporates. In 2012, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations reported the area under ever-increasing salinization has nearly reached 84 million acres, or 34 mil- lion hectares. According to a paper published in Frontiers in Plant Science, it is thought that soil salinization impacts 6 percent of the total acres in production, and that salt- affected soils impact about 50 percent of total irrigated land in the world, costing farmers about $12 billion. In soils with high salinity, “seeds will germinate poorly, if at all, and the plants will grow slowly or become stunted,” says Tony Provin, a professor and Extension soil specialist at Texas A&M University. “If the salinity concentration is high enough, the plants will wilt and die, no matter how much you water them.” Plant Functionality At the plant level, water moves into the roots of plants through a process called osmosis, which is controlled by the level of salts in the soil water and in the water contained in the plant. If the level of salts in the soil water is too high, water flows from the plant’s roots back into the soil. This results in dehydration of the plant, causing yield decline or even death of the plant. Salinity also interferes with nitrogen uptake, reduces Cracks and soil clumps called “aggregates” form when saline-sodic, high-clay soil dries out. Irrigation water flowing into these cracks leaches salts until the aggregates swell and the cracks close up. PHOTO: PEGGY GREB, USDA-ARS.