Using different soil chemical amendments for reclamation of saline –sodic soils

Subject Areas : Farm water management with the aim of improving irrigation management indicators

Ebrahim  Pazira ¹ (Professor of Soil Science Department, Science and Research branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran)

Received: 2011-12-05 Accepted : 2012-04-22 Published : 2012-08-22

Keywords:

Abstract :

Amelioration of saline–sodic soils by means of different amendments is a subject of interest for soil and water conservation in arid and semi-arid regions. The general concept of "precision agriculture" is in contrast with traditional research methodologies, which are based on trial and error in some fields of agricultural sciences, and are time-consuming, expensive and produce uncertain/unreliable results. For this reason, recently, most researchers suggest another method, namely, the socalled "adaptive research", to overcome the mentioned weak points. The recent methodology has shown its advantages at national, local, and international levels and it only needs to be modified for specified environmental conditions. Most recently, a promising methodology is introduced as "integrated research plans", to clarify several questions in a single research project. But, at the same time, they do not ignore the other optimum conditions for such a finding. In research projects related to soil and water sciences, when plant is considered within the system, the study subject will be more complicated. In present article, it is pointed out that except some documented field experiments carried out for reclamation of salt-affected soils, the side effects of amendment applications such as ionic imbalances, plant nutrient availability, improvement of soil physical conditions (enhancing permeability and aggregate stability) did not taken into consideration. These impacts are acting due to their chemical influences on physical soil properties, but have not been adequately studied for salt- affected soils of the country.