Soil salinity control

Soil salinity control refers to controlling the process and progress of soil salinity to prevent soil degradation by salination and reclamation of already salty (saline) soils. Soil reclamation is also called soil improvement, rehabilitation, remediation, recuperation, or amelioration. The primary man-made cause of salinization is irrigation. River water or groundwater used in irrigation contains salts, which remain in the soil after the water has evaporated. The primary method of controlling soil salinity is to permit only 10–20% of the irrigation water to leach the soil, so that it will be drained and discharged through an appropriate drainage system. The salt concentration of the drainage water is normally 5 to 10 times higher than that of the irrigation water, thus salt export more closely matches salt import and it will not accumulate. Salty (saline) soils are soils that have a high salt content. The predominant salt is normally sodium chloride (NaCl, "table salt"). Saline soils are therefore also sodic soils but there may be sodic soils that are not saline, but alkaline. This damage is an average of 2,000 hectares of irrigated land in arid and semi-arid areas daily for more than 20 years across 75 countries (each week the world loses an area larger than Manhattan)...To feed the world's anticipated nine billion people by 2050, and with little new productive land available, it's a case of all lands needed on deck.—principal author Manzoor Qadir, Assistant Director, Water and Human Development, at UN University's Canadian-based Institute for Water, Environment and Health According to a study by UN University, about , representing 20% of the world's irrigated lands are affected, up from in the early 1990s. In the Indo-Gangetic Plain, home to over 10% of the world's population, crop yield losses for wheat, rice, sugarcane and cotton grown on salt-affected lands could be 40%, 45%, 48%, and 63%, respectively. Salty soils are a common feature and an environmental problem in irrigated lands in arid and semi-arid regions, resulting in poor or little crop production.