Seawater Irrigation Management

Increasing food production to meet the needs of the increasing population on a sustainable basis remains the primary goal in the developing world. Many countries are looking to the irrigated agriculture as the reliable source to achieve this increased production. The utilization of the groundwater with the poor recharging system is an emerging threat to the arid and semiarid areas of the world. Due to several environmental reasons the groundwater is being degraded and negatively impacting food production. Therefore, the researchers have to look at ways to use effectively marginal-quality waters as an alternative source for irrigation. The problems associated with the use of low quality waters for agriculture need to be searched and addressed in such a way that it could produce technically sound, economically viable and environmentally safe system. Therefore our research studies were mainly focused on the utilization of saline-waters for crop production. The major theme of this study was to evaluate the possibility of using diluted seawater in crop production.

Autorentext

Ahmed Al-Busaidi, Ph.D College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering, Sultan Qaboos University, P.O. Box 34, Al-Khoud123, Muscat, Oman; Email: ahmed99@squ.edu.om or albusaidiahmed@yahoo.com.