Evaluating Water Treatment Technologies to Irrigate Crops With Saline Groundwater

摘要

Since the 1950's many irrigation experts have reported that low saline groundwater is a vast and underutilized resource in agriculture and that low cost energy water treatment technologies would be needed for its use in irrigation. Over the years, advanced treatment technologies have arisen to increase the benefits from the use of electricity and electromagnetic fields in non-chemical water conditioning or treatment applications along with farmer anecdotal information on crop benefits. However, standardized test protocols have not been developed that could directly measure and validate effectiveness to the marketplace. Over the past 2 years, paired crop production test trials were conducted in Arizona, California, and Texas with treated and untreated (control) low saline groundwater for irrigation of crops to develop standard test protocols. Tests were designed to measure: seed germination, root hair growth, plant growth, seed and seed pod development, plant survival due to drought and exposure tohigh temperatures in field trial test sites, and subsequent changes in salt cations and nitrogen levels.