Promising management strategies to improve crop sustainability and to amend soil salinity

The FAO estimated that over 6% of the world’s land area and about 20% of irrigated croplands are affected by salinity. Strategic and adaptive research on the incorporation of modern technologies, salt-tolerant varieties, biochar, plant growth regulators, and nanoparticles will be critical in amending salt-affected soil and increasing the productivity of degraded land.

Plants are encountering several environmental adversities caused both by living and non-living factors, with the former known as biotic stress and the latter as abiotic stress. Various stress factors have been found in almost all environments and climatic conditions, but salinity stress seen in plants growing under arid and semi-arid conditions should be given priority. Salinity stress is a form of abiotic stress, which is caused due to salt accumulation in the root zones of plants, making them physiologically flaccid and unfit for production.

Currently, approximately 1.1 × 10⁹ ha of land is salt-affected globally, and saline soils are increasing at an alarming rate of 1.5 million hectares annually. The FAO estimated that over 6% of the world’s land area and about 20% of irrigated croplands are affected by salinity.

Nearly 95% of the total degraded land in India (7.5 million hectares) is accounted for by soil salinity/alkalinity, especially found in the states in the northwestern part (Western Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, northern Rajasthan, and Delhi), the central part (Gujarat, central and western Rajasthan, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh), and the northeastern part (West Bengal, central and eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and eastern Odisha) of India.sea-level rise will cause the country’s landscape to become “sicker.”