About 10.56 lakh out of 16.89 lakh hectares of coastal land in the country are affected by salinity of various degrees, according to a survey of the Soil Resources Development Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture.

The findings of the survey in 2010 on saline soil of Bangladesh said that more than 62 per cent out of the total cultivated land in the coastal areas had already been affected by

Climate change and catastrophic events have contributed to rice shortages in several regions due to decreased water availability and soil salinization. Although not adapted to salt or drought stress, two commercial rice varieties achieved tolerance to these stresses by colonizing them with Class 2 fungal endophytes isolated from plants growing across moisture

LUCKNOW: The state of environment report released by UP environment directorate says more and more of prime agricultural land is getting diverted to non-agricultural uses in the state. "Land is under severe pressure and has been subjected to many kinds of degradation", says the report

Strangely, the number of very small land holdings has gone up considerably.

The India Remote Sensing data on 1:50,000 scale revealed the occurrence of permanent waterlogging in low-lying flats and depressions of the Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojona (IGNP) command area. Such data also indicated seasonal dynamics of waterlogging and soil salinization in irrigated areas.

Samadhiyala Bandhara Project land transfer.

Land degradation is a serious menace to food security. Salinity-related land degradation is becoming a serious challenge to food and nutritional security in developing countries. Order vertisols has problem of salinity throughout the country. The vertisols and their associates cover nearly 257 m ha of the earth

Kachchh, the 2nd largest district in India (45,652 km2) and located in the north-western region of Gujarat, experiences tropical arid climate (13 average rainy days in a year) with high evapotranspiration rate resulting in degradation of land. Higher dependence on groundwater for agricultural and industrial activities has accelerated the salinity

Cyclone Aila seemed to have broken the back of agriculture in the Sunderbans. Most observers, including Santadas Ghosh, felt it would be years before agricultural activity got back to normal. But just three months after the cyclone, salinity notwithstanding, seeds were sprouting and the freshwater ecology stirring with life.

In recent decades, market forces have prompted farmers in the Sunderbans to choose modern, high-yielding varieties of paddy, oblivious to their sensitivity to salt.

Cultivation of salt-tolerant varieties of rice and other crops has helped increase crop yield and farm income
Surinder Sud / New Delhi June 29, 2010, 0:42 IST

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