Highlights of an Experimental Study on the Vulnerability of a Soil-Crop System to Drought and Saline Water

摘要

Climate change, if it occurs as projected, might have significant implications for agricultural and water resources. Among them soil moisture changes, which reflect changes in agricultural water availability, are of special concern due to their directimpact on crop growth. In this situation drought and salinity can be considered as related stressors and influence the productivity of agricultural systems. The present work is a review of the results of 7 years experiments in areas where the sea waterintrusion affects the soil hydrological physical properties and the crop production. On two sites, Torre Lama (TL) and Vitulazio (VT), at each spring soil samples were taken at different depths to determine the ECe and ESP, moreover from the top soil layer samples were taken to determine the index of aggregates water stability in water (IASW). Undisturbed soil samples were taken too in different years on each sites to determine the hydrological parameters h(0), and the soil porosity by image analysis. The impact of the different soil hydrological properties on the temporal variability of soil water content was evaluated for a range of meteorological conditions, in particular for a dry, wet and normal climatic year. At VT the yield response of sunflower, sweet pepper and eggplant growth under saline water irrigation was tested. Treatments consisted in a factorial combination of 3 treatments (T025, T05, Tl) irrigated with water to a concentration of 0.25, 0.5 and 1% of NaCl and a control (TO) irrigatedwith fresh water.