The researchers conducted trials during the 2021–22 and 2022–23 dry seasons at five locations each in Barishal and Khulna, giving the study ten on-farm sites across two coastal agroecological environments. Each 1,320-square-metre field was divided among three irrigation regimes: continuous flooding, saturation without standing water, and AWD. Under continuous flooding, a 5–7-centimetre water depth was maintained through most of the growing season, with the field drained 15 days before harvest. Saturation treatments were irrigated whenever standing water disappeared, while AWD fields were reirrigated after the water table fell about 15 centimetres below the soil surface. The experiments used a randomized complete block design with three replicates per location.

All plots were planted with BRRI dhan67, a salt-tolerant, medium-duration rice variety with an approximately 145-day growth period. Thirty-five- to 40-day-old seedlings were transplanted at 20-by-20-centimetre spacing. Irrigation was supplied from nearby rivers and canals through pipes fitted with flowmeters, allowing the researchers to measure applied water throughout each season while excluding rainfall. Soil samples were taken at four stages—before transplanting, maximum tillering, flowering, and after harvest—to measure salinity in a one-to-five soil-to-water suspension. Grain yields were measured from 10 square metres per plot and adjusted to 14% moisture, while irrigation water productivity was calculated as grain yield divided by the volume of irrigation water applied.

In Barishal, irrigation treatment did not significantly affect grain yield, tillering, or thousand-grain weight. AWD did produce more spikelets per panicle than either continuous flooding or saturation, with 129 spikelets under AWD compared with 122 and 124, respectively. Although soil salinity rose as the crop developed, the differences among irrigation treatments were relatively small. At harvest, the reported one-to-five electrical conductivity values were about 0.27 under continuous flooding, 0.28 under saturation, and 0.30 dS per metre under AWD. This low level of variation meant that AWD could reduce water demand without a detectable yield penalty under the conditions tested in Barishal.

The clearest water-saving benefit appeared in the amount of irrigation applied. In 2021–22, AWD plots in Barishal received between 679 and 808 millimetres of irrigation, compared with 917–1,200 millimetres under continuous flooding and 855–937 millimetres under saturation. During 2022–23, AWD required 686–900 millimetres, while continuous flooding required 900–1,140 millimetres and saturation 828–1,000 millimetres. AWD consistently used the least water and required fewer irrigations. Irrigation water productivity was correspondingly higher: AWD values ranged from 0.78 to 0.98 kilograms per cubic metre in 2021–22 and from 0.73 to 0.79 kilograms per cubic metre in the following season, exceeding the ranges recorded under continuous flooding and saturation.

Khulna presented a more difficult trade-off between water conservation and crop performance. Irrigation-water salinity was consistently greater there than in Barishal and increased as the dry season advanced. In 2021–22, water salinity rose from about 1.5 dS per metre in January to 4.3 dS per metre in April in Khulna; the corresponding increase in Barishal was from 0.2 to around 1.5 dS per metre. Soil salinity also climbed through the crop cycle. At flowering, the reported one-to-five electrical conductivity reached approximately 0.56 under continuous flooding, 0.64 under saturation, and 0.72 dS per metre under AWD. The values declined slightly after flowering but remained highest under AWD, at about 0.67 dS per metre at harvest, compared with 0.60 under saturation and 0.54 under continuous flooding.

Those salinity differences coincided with significant treatment effects on yield and yield components. Continuous flooding produced the highest average grain yield in Khulna, at 5.8 tonnes per hectare, followed by saturation at 5.5 tonnes and AWD at 5.0 tonnes. It also produced the greatest number of tillers per square metre, 503, the largest number of spikelets per panicle, 122, and the highest thousand-grain weight, 21.0 grams. AWD recorded the lowest values for these components. Across both seasons, AWD therefore reduced irrigation water application by about 27.5% in 2021–22 and 22% in 2022–23, yet the water saved did not translate into a comparable grain yield.

Despite its yield penalty, AWD still delivered the highest irrigation water productivity in Khulna. The measure was 0.75 kilograms per cubic metre under AWD in 2021–22, compared with 0.66 under saturation and 0.58 under continuous flooding, an improvement of approximately 30% over continuous flooding. In 2022–23, the corresponding values were 0.69, 0.64, and 0.57 kilograms per cubic metre, making the AWD advantage approximately 21%. The productivity gain therefore reflects a combination of less irrigation water and the amount of grain produced per unit of water, rather than an improvement in absolute yield. In both regions, higher irrigation inputs were generally associated with lower irrigation water productivity, while water-saving treatments used less water in 97% of comparisons with continuous flooding.

The authors did not directly measure salt leaching, plant sodium uptake, or the root-zone salt balance, so they could not establish the precise mechanism behind the yield differences. They proposed that periodic drying under AWD may concentrate salts in the surface soil through evaporation, potentially increasing plant exposure to sodium and impairing grain development. Continuous flooding may instead facilitate salt movement below the root zone, while saturation retains a wetter surface and showed intermediate salinity and yield in most comparisons. The researchers caution that saturation was not a consistent replacement for flooding either: in the second Khulna season, its yield was significantly lower than that of continuous flooding, suggesting that its performance may weaken under prolonged or more severe salinity stress.

The study supports site-specific irrigation planning rather than a blanket shift to AWD in coastal Bangladesh. Its strongest evidence applies to the tested environments, seasons, irrigation-water qualities, and the BRRI dhan67 variety. Validation across more locations, years, water-salinity conditions, and rice varieties is still needed before wider recommendations can be made. Within the experiment, AWD was clearly effective at conserving water and improving irrigation water productivity in low-salinity Barishal without reducing yield. In medium-salinity Khulna, the same approach saved water and improved water productivity but came with greater soil salinity and lower yields, making careful control of irrigation water and salinity central to any decision to use it in saline-prone coastal fields.

Subject of Research: Field assessment of alternate wetting and drying irrigation for saline coastal Boro rice in Bangladesh

Article Title: Assessing the impact of alternate wetting and drying irrigation on soil salinity, water productivity, and Boro rice yield in coastal saline regions of Bangladesh

Article References: Paul, P. L. C., Roy, D., Shamsudduha, M., Hossain, M. B., Alam, M. M., Shultana, R., Mila, A. J., & Hasnat, J. (2026). Assessing the impact of alternate wetting and drying irrigation on soil salinity, water productivity, and Boro rice yield in coastal saline regions of Bangladesh. Discover Agriculture, 4(1), Article 325. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44279-026-00804-z

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44279-026-00804-z

Keywords: alternate wetting and drying, Boro rice, soil salinity, irrigation water productivity, coastal Bangladesh, grain yield, saline agriculture, water management, BRRI dhan67, Assessing, impact, alternate

The research team, led by Tong Wang of Shenzhen University, collected soil samples from three sites across a subtropical agricultural district in southern China, capturing three distinct textures: sandy loam, loam, and clay loam. Each sample was characterized for a full suite of physical and chemical properties, including bulk density, organic carbon, pH, electrical conductivity, field capacity, and permanent wilting point. The soils were then packed into pots under controlled laboratory conditions and exposed to seven salinity levels ranging from 2 to 24 decisiemens per meter, a span chosen to mirror real conditions in coastal Guangdong, where routine irrigation water sits near the low end of that range and seawater intrusion during dry periods can push shallow groundwater toward the top.

The salinity solutions were prepared synthetically from sodium chloride and calcium chloride in a fixed 2:1 molar ratio rather than drawn from natural water sources, a deliberate choice that eliminated uncontrolled ionic confounding. Each pot was leached with its designated saline solution until the drainage water matched the irrigation water’s electrical conductivity, ensuring uniform salt distribution. Gypsum blocks installed before treatment were read with a moisture meter that converts direct current to alternating current to prevent electrode polarization, producing readings proportional to soil water content from dry soil to saturation.

Calibration proceeded by oven-drying the soil, saturating it with saline solutions, and letting it air-dry while periodically recording both block resistance and gravimetric moisture determined by weighing. This produced paired measurements of electrical resistance, which ranged from roughly 4 to 244 kilo-ohms, and true volumetric water content across matric suctions from 0.1 to 2.5 bar. From these data the team defined a correction factor, the difference between predicted and measured water content, and set out to model how that correction depends on salinity, suction, and texture simultaneously.

The modeling tool of choice was Response Surface Methodology, or RSM, a statistical framework designed to untangle the main, quadratic, and interactive effects of multiple continuous variables with relatively few experiments. Because salinity in decisiemens per meter and suction in bar occupy incomparable numerical scales, both factors were coded into a standardized dimensionless range between minus one and plus one, giving regression coefficients equal weight. Rather than using a classical designed experiment such as a central composite design, the researchers treated their systematic laboratory matrix as historical data and fit polynomial surfaces directly using Design-Expert software, confirming that the two independent variables remained orthogonal with negligible multicollinearity.

The central technical finding concerns model order. Linear and two-factor-interaction formulations captured general trends but showed significant lack-of-fit, meaning simpler equations could not represent the combined salinity-suction behavior. Quadratic models improved the fit but still left systematic residuals. Only a cubic polynomial, one that includes third-order terms for each factor, achieved non-significant lack-of-fit tests across all three textures, with adjusted R-squared values of 0.93 to 0.95 and predicted R-squared values within 0.03 of them, indicating genuine generalization rather than over-parameterization. The physical rationale is that electrical transport in a saline porous block follows a dual-regime mechanism: bulk electrolytic conduction through free pore water competes with surface conduction along the electrical double layers lining the gypsum matrix, and the transition between these regimes is asymmetric, not the symmetric parabolic decay a quadratic model assumes.

The fitted coefficients reveal how the correction behaves. In loam soil, salinity carried the largest positive linear coefficient at 0.19, with negative quadratic terms signaling diminishing returns at high salinity and suction, and a negative interaction term showing that simultaneous increases in both variables suppress the corrected moisture. In clay loam, salinity dominated even more strongly with a coefficient of 0.248, while interaction terms were not significant, suggesting the fine pore structure buffers suction effects and lets salinity act largely independently. Sandy loam showed the smallest coefficients overall, consistent with its low specific surface area and limited cation exchange capacity. Across all textures, salinity and its square contributed most to the correction, followed by suction and its square.

The performance metrics are striking. The two-factor cubic models achieved R-squared values of 0.97 to 0.98 with root mean square errors between 0.015 and 0.022 cubic centimeters of water per cubic centimeter of soil, and a coefficient of residual mass near zero, indicating negligible systematic bias. Compared with uncorrected raw gypsum block readings, the calibration reduced RMSE by more than 95 percent across all three textures. Accuracy ranked clay loam highest, then loam, then sandy loam, tracking water-holding capacity and the fine-porosity films that preserve conductive pathways around the sensor. Constrained numerical optimization identified the largest required corrections in clay loam, up to 0.064 cubic centimeters per cubic centimeter at 17.6 decisiemens per meter and 2.5 bar suction, with desirability indices near 0.9.

Some of the raw data patterns are physically revealing in their own right. In clay loam at 6 decisiemens per meter, apparent water content stayed nearly flat between 0.36 and 0.39 across the entire suction range, an apparent plateau that the authors attribute not to a lack of real drainage but to a balance between the resistance increase caused by capillary drying and the conductivity boost from ions concentrated in the shrinking pore water. At moderate salinity, the ionic conductivity of remaining pore water partially compensates for drainage-induced resistance; at higher salinity, thinning water films and increased tortuosity progressively limit ionic transport, producing the strongly nonlinear, non-monotonic response that only the cubic surface can capture.

The practical implications extend well beyond one province. Gypsum blocks remain the backbone of low-cost, distributed irrigation monitoring in greenhouses and smallholder schemes worldwide, precisely because they are cheap, robust, and easy to automate. This study demonstrates that their salt vulnerability is a calibration problem, not a reason to abandon the technology, and that a compact polynomial correction, parameterized per soil texture, can restore accuracy comparable to far more expensive instrumentation. The authors are careful to note the limits: the models are empirical, validated only within the tested ranges of salinity, suction, and texture, and should not be extrapolated beyond them. Field-scale validation across additional soils remains the necessary next step, but for saline agricultural regions from coastal China to arid irrigation districts everywhere, the message is that a seventy-year-old sensor, armed with the right mathematics, can still compete at the precision frontier.

Subject of Research: Response surface calibration of gypsum block soil moisture sensors under salinity and matric suction

Article Title: A response surface-based calibration framework for accurate soil water content determination under saline conditions: a case study in Guangdong Province, China

Article References: Wang, T., Tong, R., Chen, Y., & Wu, X. (2026). A response surface-based calibration framework for accurate soil water content determination under saline conditions: a case study in Guangdong Province, China. Environmental Earth Sciences, 85(16), Article 426. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-026-13168-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s12665-026-13168-w

Keywords: soil water content, gypsum blocks, sensor calibration, soil salinity, matric suction, response surface methodology, Guangdong, irrigation management, soil texture, electrical resistance, saline agriculture, soil physics

The chemistry of salt stress is brutal in its simplicity. Sodium ions, which plants never needed in quantity, flood into roots through the same transport machinery that carries potassium, an essential nutrient. Once inside, sodium disrupts enzyme function, interferes with potassium-dependent processes, and generates a cascade of reactive oxygen species that shred cell membranes. Meanwhile, excess sodium crowds out calcium uptake, and calcium is no luxury: it stabilizes cell walls, acts as a universal intracellular signal for stress responses, and helps regulate which ions enter the plant in the first place. A plant starved of calcium while drowning in sodium is fighting on two fronts at once.

Silicon has long been the dark horse of plant stress research. Although it is not classified as an essential element for most plants, grasses like wheat and rice accumulate it to remarkable concentrations, depositing it as silica in cell walls, particularly in the endodermis of the root—a living gatekeeper layer that controls what reaches the vascular system. Decades of studies have shown that silicon supplementation can reduce sodium transport to shoots, bolster antioxidant defenses, and improve photosynthetic performance under stress. But silicon rarely works alone in real soils, where calcium is abundant and chemically interactive, and the nature of the silicon–calcium partnership has remained stubbornly unclear.

Hu and Wang attacked the problem with a Box-Behnken response surface design, a statistical framework that lets researchers map how multiple variables interact without testing every possible combination. They varied silicon at 0, 1, and 2 millimolar, sodium at 50, 150, and 250 millimolar, and calcium at 5, 15, and 25 millimolar across 17 treatment combinations, measuring growth, ion homeostasis, and antioxidant capacity in wheat. The authors are careful to note that the 250 millimolar sodium level was chosen to capture the curvature and boundary behavior of the response surface within the experimental framework, rather than to simulate typical field salinity—a methodological honesty that matters when translating results to the farm.

The headline result emerged under the harshest salt treatment. At 250 millimolar sodium, the combination of 1 millimolar silicon with just 5 millimolar calcium significantly enhanced wheat’s salt tolerance through three distinct physiological pathways. First, it reduced sodium accumulation while maintaining calcium homeostasis, suggesting the pairing helps the root’s selective filtration system discriminate against sodium more effectively. Second, it boosted the activity of peroxidase, or POD, a key antioxidant enzyme in roots, and reduced the content of malondialdehyde, or MDA, a classic biomarker of lipid peroxidation—meaning less oxidative damage to cellular membranes. Third, it sustained chlorophyll content, preserving the photosynthetic machinery that salt stress typically degrades.

At moderate salinity of 150 millimolar sodium, the optimal recipe shifted. High silicon at 2 millimolar combined with low calcium at 5 millimolar dramatically promoted growth: root length reached 1.9 times, root fresh weight 1.8 times, and plant height 1.3 times the values seen with a medium silicon–calcium combination. This dose-dependence is the study’s most practically significant insight. More is not better. When the researchers paired 2 millimolar silicon with 25 millimolar calcium at 150 millimolar sodium, the treatment actually exacerbated growth inhibition. And at extreme salt with 2 millimolar silicon and 15 millimolar calcium, the plants suffered damage to their photosynthetic assimilates due to excessive sodium accumulation—silicon’s protection had been overwhelmed.

The analysis of variance results added a layer of nuance that complicates any simple narrative about silicon as a universal stress shield. Silicon’s effects were strongly trait- and condition-dependent. It exerted significant direct effects on shoot fresh weight, POD activity, and membrane stability, but showed only limited influence on root length and overall biomass accumulation. In other words, silicon’s protective power is real but selective: it defends the biochemical machinery of the shoot and the integrity of membranes, yet it does not single-handedly drive root architecture or total growth. This selectivity explains why the silicon–calcium ratio matters so profoundly—calcium compensates precisely where silicon is weakest, particularly in root development and cell wall stability.

Mechanistically, the findings fit an emerging picture of how these two elements cooperate. Silicon deposited in the root endodermis is thought to physically obstruct apoplastic sodium flow—the bypass route that lets sodium slip between cells into the xylem stream—while calcium cross-links pectin molecules in cell walls, tightening the same barrier from the chemical side. Calcium also functions as a second messenger, triggering the signaling cascades that activate antioxidant enzymes like POD. When both elements are present in the right proportions, the physical filter and the biochemical alarm system reinforce each other. When calcium is excessive, however, it may compete with other cations or precipitate with silicon, disrupting the delicate balance the study documented.

The agricultural implications are considerable, particularly for regions like Xinjiang, where the authors are based and where irrigated salinity is a chronic constraint on production. Silicon fertilization is already attracting attention as a low-cost, low-risk amendment for saline agriculture, with field studies in crops from barley to sweet sorghum showing benefits. But if the silicon–calcium ratio determines the outcome, then blanket recommendations to apply more silicon could backfire on high-calcium soils, while calcareous soils might need silicon adjustments rather than calcium additions. The study’s framework—mapping response surfaces across realistic concentration ranges—offers a template for developing soil-specific dosing guidelines rather than one-size-fits-all prescriptions.

Caveats remain. The work was conducted under controlled conditions with hydroponic-style nutrient management, and the authors themselves frame their conclusions as applying within the tested concentration range. Field soils buffer ion activities in ways that nutrient solutions do not, and wheat cultivars differ widely in their inherent salt tolerance. Still, the core message stands out with unusual clarity for a mineral nutrition study: in the war between wheat and salt, silicon and calcium are not independent mercenaries but coordinated allies, and victory depends on getting their partnership exactly right. For a world that must grow more grain on increasingly salty ground, that partnership may prove one of the most practical discoveries in crop physiology this year.

Subject of Research: Interactive effects of silicon and calcium on sodium uptake and salt stress tolerance in wheat

Article Title: The interactive effect of silicon and calcium in inhibiting Na+ uptake and mitigating salt stress in wheat

Article References: Hu, T., & Wang, Y. (2026). The interactive effect of silicon and calcium in inhibiting Na+ uptake and mitigating salt stress in wheat. Plant and Soil. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-026-09006-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s11104-026-09006-4

Keywords: silicon, calcium, salt stress, wheat, sodium uptake, ion homeostasis, antioxidant enzymes, peroxidase, chlorophyll, Box-Behnken design, saline agriculture, plant physiology

The numbers are striking. Compared with broadcasting, in which seed is scattered uniformly across the soil surface, dibbling increased fresh forage yield by 46.46 percent in pearl millet and 22.27 percent in sorghum. Under the best treatment combinations, total forage yield reached approximately 170 megagrams per hectare for millet and 130 megagrams per hectare for sorghum. The mean difference between dibbling and broadcasting was highly significant in statistical testing. What makes these gains remarkable is that they were achieved without changing the crop, the fertilizer regime, or the total amount of water applied. The only variable was the spatial arrangement of seeds and, with it, the way water moved through the root zone.

The mechanism behind the effect is rooted in soil physics. When water is applied through a drip system to localized planting holes, as in the dibbling treatment, infiltration is concentrated in discrete wetted bulbs beneath each hill. This concentrated water movement pushes soluble salts downward, below the active rooting depth, rather than allowing them to accumulate near the surface where evaporation is strongest. Broadcasting, by contrast, spreads water and roots thinly across the surface, encouraging capillary rise that draws salt back up into the topsoil between plants. The study measured soil electrical conductivity in the 0 to 30 centimeter layer after the final harvest and found the lowest values under dibbling, roughly 9.91 decisiemens per meter lower than under line and broadcasting methods, following the consistent trend of broadcasting being saltiest, row planting intermediate, and dibbling least saline.

Irrigation level played a supporting but revealing role. The researchers compared two regimes, 100 percent and 110 percent of crop evapotranspiration, calculated using the FAO Penman-Monteith equation with meteorological data from the Marsa Matrouh station and crop-specific coefficients. On its own, irrigation level showed no statistically significant effect on the measured parameters. But the interaction between irrigation and sowing method was significant: the extra 10 percent of water reduced root-zone salinity primarily when combined with dibbling, because the additional volume enhanced percolation of sodium and chloride ions below the root zone and helped displace exchangeable sodium with calcium. This leaching effect also lowered soil pH, with the lowest values, around 7.60 to 7.70, recorded under dibbling with 110 percent irrigation, while broadcasting at 100 percent produced the highest, near 8.0.

The sodium adsorption ratio, a key indicator of sodicity risk that threatens soil structure and permeability, told the same story. The lowest SAR values, approximately 4.0, occurred under dibbling combined with 110 percent irrigation and millet cultivation, while broadcasting produced values as high as 18.0. Even the calcareous nature of the coastal soils, rich in calcium carbonate, responded to management: reductions in active carbonate reached about 8 percent under dibbling, compared with 4 percent under row sowing and 2 percent under broadcasting. These localized rhizosphere changes, likely driven by improved water movement, leaching, and biological activity around densely concentrated roots, hint that careful sowing geometry can gradually reshape the chemistry of degraded soils rather than merely tolerating it.

Water use efficiency added a crucial nuance to the picture. Here the trend reversed with respect to irrigation: the highest efficiency values came at 100 percent of crop evapotranspiration, not 110 percent. Pearl millet under dibbling achieved approximately 0.69 megagrams of dry forage per cubic meter of water, the highest in the study, while sorghum under the same sowing method reached about 0.52 megagrams per cubic meter at 100 percent irrigation, compared with roughly 0.33 under broadcasting. Although the 110 percent treatment slightly increased biomass through enhanced leaching, the extra water diluted overall efficiency. The authors conclude that water productivity depends more on how efficiently water is distributed than on how much is applied, a finding with obvious implications for a region where renewable freshwater supplies have fallen to around 600 cubic meters per person per year in Egypt.

Between the two crops, pearl millet emerged as the clear winner under saline stress. Both species are considered moderately salt tolerant at around 4 decisiemens per meter, but millet maintained productivity at salinity levels exceeding 10 to 12 decisiemens per meter, where sorghum declined significantly. The physiological basis is well understood: millet accumulates osmolytes such as proline and soluble sugars to maintain cellular water balance, preserves a favorable potassium-to-sodium ratio through selective ion uptake, and deploys a dense fibrous root system that can exploit less saline soil layers. Its antioxidant defenses also protect cellular structures from the oxidative damage that salinity provokes. Sorghum performed respectably, particularly under dibbling, but millet’s combination of tolerance and water efficiency makes it the more reliable choice for salt-affected fields.

To synthesize these effects, the team developed a Soil Salinity Vulnerability Index, a weighted composite of electrical conductivity, pH, sodium adsorption ratio, calcium carbonate content, and organic matter, with weights derived through the Analytical Hierarchy Process using pairwise comparisons on a nine-point scale. The index separated the treatments cleanly: broadcasting scored highest, around 12, indicating greatest vulnerability, while dibbling consistently approached zero. This tool matters because it translates scattered soil measurements into a single, comparable vulnerability score that farmers and extension services can use to evaluate management options. It also confirmed that agronomic practice, not crop choice, was the dominant lever: in the multivariate analysis, sowing method was statistically significant with a partial eta squared of 0.99, whereas crop type alone was not.

The study, published in Discover Soil, comes with honest caveats. It spanned a single growing season, from April to July 2023, so multi-year trials are needed to confirm that the salt-leaching benefits of dibbling persist without degrading soil structure over time. Results may also vary across agro-ecological zones with different groundwater chemistry, and future work should test more salt-tolerant genotypes and explore how organic amendments interact with precision sowing. Still, the core message is powerful in its practicality. On roughly one third of Egypt’s agricultural land affected by salinity, where per capita cultivated area has shrunk below 0.1 acres and global food demand climbs toward a projected 9.7 billion people by 2050, the combination of pearl millet, dibbling, and irrigation tuned to 100 percent of crop water requirements offers a low-cost, immediately deployable strategy. It turns a humble planting technique into a biological salt pump, squeezing more forage from every drop of scarce, brackish water while slowly pushing the salt back where it belongs.

Subject of Research: Effects of irrigation levels and sowing methods on forage productivity and soil salinity in salt-affected soils of Northwestern Egypt

Article Title: Effects of irrigation levels and sowing methods on forage productivity and soil salinity in Northwestern Egypt

Article References: Wassif, O. M., Wassif, M., & El-Shaer, H. (2026). Effects of irrigation levels and sowing methods on forage productivity and soil salinity in Northwestern Egypt. Discover Soil, 3(1), Article 114. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44378-026-00266-1

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44378-026-00266-1

Keywords: soil salinity, dibbling, pearl millet, sorghum, water use efficiency, drip irrigation, Egypt, forage production, sodicity, semi-arid agriculture, salt tolerance, leaching