Irrigation with water containing salts: Evidence from a macro-data national case study in Israel

Eran Raveh and Alon Ben-Gal

Agricultural Water Management, 2016, vol. 170, issue C, 176-179

Abstract: Israel has an historic policy of providing marginal quality water, containing relatively high concentrations of salts, to agriculture for irrigation. Development of supply of recycled wastewater and precise, efficient field scale irrigation application technologies are hypothesized to have caused steady increased exposure of irrigated soils and crops in Israel to salinity. Nation-wide scale consideration of the effect of historical increased salinity is presented. Data was collected from laboratories used by growers for analyses of salts in soils and diagnostic leaves. Additionally, the sodium level of edible plant material in fresh produce found today in Israel was evaluated. The data suggest that the exposure of Israeli agriculture to salinity is troublesome. The leaf and soil analyses indicate a steady increase in salinity. The Na analysis of fresh produce insinuates that Israeli agricultural crops are exposed to salinity that is markedly greater than that globally acceptable. This, together with the inherent need for leaching when irrigating with water high in salts, strongly suggests that Israel’s historical practice of providing marginal quality water to agriculture is not sustainable. The turn to desalination as a strategy for water security is a positive opportunity to correct the apparent mistakes of the last decades and to reverse the trends of increasing exposure to salts.

Keywords: Chloride; Electrical conductivity; Sodium; Sodium adsorption ratio; Salinity; Sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377415301542
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:170:y:2016:i:c:p:176-179

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2015.10.035

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().