Saline Water For Agriculture
Published on by Water Network Research, Official research team of The Water Network in Academic
New Mexico State University professor of soil physics, is researching the use of highly saline water for Agriculture
Since 2013, he has been experimenting with water from the Brackish Groundwater National Desalination Research Facility in Alamogordo, researching the uses and impact of desalination in the environment, particularly if used in agriculture.
Shukla began a germination experiment in 2013 with six plant species to determine their reaction to saline water. He, along with his graduate assistant and other NMSU researchers, did a greenhouse screening study of food plants barley and triticale, biomass plants lepidium alyssoides and switchgrass, and fodder plants Atriplex and NiPa Grass.
The plants were germinated in petri dishes and given four saline treatments, including Las Cruses city tap water and water from the desalination facility in Alamogordo.
"There are two reasons we chose these plants. Number one is that we knew that some of these plants can be grown under highly saline water. Number two is that the Bureau of Reclamation Cooperative Agreement, which is funding this project, and the NMSU Institute for Energy wanted us to use these plants," Shukla said.
He added that water supplies in arid regions, such as New Mexico, are valuable even when high in salt. Through proper understanding of the transport behavior of concentrate, proper plant selection and proper management, the concentrate can be used to irrigate halophytes - plants that grow in salty environments - year-round.
The other part of his experiment dealt with soil and its salinity retention. For this experiment several plants were planted in clay soil brought from the brackish water plant, and silica sand.
Both experiments proved that to some extent and with certain variations, the plants were able to grow in saline water, and he will continue testing soil types and their properties to better assess a concentrate disposal strategy.
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