ICAR calls for managing salinity

Tribune News Service

Karnal, March 1

The local Central Soil Salinity Research Institute on Sunday celebrated its 52nd foundation day.

Chief guest SK Chaudhari, Deputy Director General, (Natural Resource Management), ICAR, New Delhi, said focus needs to be placed on managing salinity and water quality problems in districts vulnerable to climate change.

He observed that excess iron and other heavy metals were increasingly becoming serious concerns in some salt-affected areas. He said remunerative non-food crops should be identified for the productive utilisation of huge amounts of municipal and industrial waste waters.

Chaudhari said while several technologies had been developed for managing localised impact, a lot needed to be done to manage it on landscape and regional levels.

He observed that farmers in salt-affected areas need to be provided viable high-value land use options with focus on horticultural crops. He exhorted scientists to think innovatively and adopt a ‘measurement to management’ approach for solving varied problems being faced by farmers in salt-affected areas.

Gurbachan Singh, former chairman, Agricultural Scientist Recruitment Board, expressed satisfaction over the current pace of technology development and dissemination to manage salt-affected soils. He said more attention needed to be paid for bringing waterlogged saline soils under cultivation through a stakeholder approach.