Mediterranean Crop Production on Saline soils

Mediterranean Crop Production on Saline soils

Editors: Nader Katerji, Atef  Hamdy, Marcello Mastrorilli

Water and soil salinity is a major risk for the future of agriculture development in Southern Mediterranean countries. In these regions, fresh water resources have already been used, while the population food requirements and climate pressure are still growing. The use of saline water resources constitutes already a remedy to face the current water scarcity.

Crop response to salinity is the research project of a team including researchers from INRA(France), MAI-Bari (Italy),  the University of Wageningen (Netherland) and CRA (Italy). Researchers from ICARDA (Syria) subsequently joined the team.

Bringing together specialists from three scientific areas – Soil Science, Eco-physiology and Agronomy – is the original feature of this team work. The team can also rely upon the latest advancements in the field of  plant breeding, especially in the selection of water-tolerant varieties.

This book gathers  22 articles resulting from research works carried out by the project team and published in international journals between 1992 and 2009. The performed studies deal with four major objectives:

–         Analysis of the Mediterranean crop response to salinity

–         Selection of salt tolerant varieties

–         Comparison of plant  productivity subject to drought and salt stress

–         More general considerations resulting from the works on salt tolerance mechanisms and methodologies of salt-tolerance classification.

This book is nowadays the most complete work on the soil-plant relation under saline conditions, directed to the Mediterranean countries.
Bringing together specialists from three scientific areas – Soil Science, Eco-physiology and Agronomy – is the original feature of this team work. The team can also rely upon the latest advancements in the field of  plant breeding, especially in the selection of water-tolerant varieties.
Copies of the book are available at the CIHEAM-IAMB Documentation Centre (Responsible: dott. Luigi Sisto – l.sisto@iamb.it; Document Delivery: Giuseppe Inchingolo: inchingolog@iamb.it)

Allegato: Index of the studied species.pdf