How can food production be sustained on increasingly saline soils?

Find sustainable ways to keep or raise food production on salt-affected soils through management, tolerant crops and remediation.

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State the question, from 100 essential questions for the future of agriculture

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	1	+# How can food production be sustained on increasingly saline soils?
	2	+
	3	+Salt builds up in soils through natural processes and through poor irrigation and drainage, and drier climates are spreading the problem. Most crops lose yield in salty soil, so the question is how to keep producing food there without degrading land and water further.
	4	+
	5	+## Question
	6	+
	7	+What are the most effective environmentally sustainable strategies to maintain or increase food production in soils affected by rising salinity? Options include management (drainage, leaching, amendments, irrigation practice), salt-tolerant crops and varieties, and halophytes, each judged on yield, environmental effects and cost.
	8	+
	9	+## Background
	10	+
	11	+The question is in the theme "enhancing resilience of agriculture to climate change" of the 100 essential questions for the future of agriculture, compiled from 419 questions submitted worldwide in 2022 [1]. A separate question on the list asks how to prevent and mitigate salinisation itself.
	12	+
	13	+## What is known
	14	+
	15	+- FAO's 2024 global assessment, its first in 50 years, estimates that 1,381 million hectares, 10.7% of global land, are salt-affected [2].
	16	+- Data-driven models of naturally occurring salinity in the world's drylands to 2100 identify South America, southern and western Australia, Mexico, the southwestern USA and South Africa as salinisation hotspots under climate change [3].
	17	+- Plants respond to salinity in two phases, an osmotic phase that slows the growth of young leaves and an ionic phase that speeds senescence of older leaves; tolerance comes from osmotic tolerance, sodium or chloride exclusion, and tissue tolerance [4].
	18	+- A sodium-transporter gene from an ancestral wheat relative, bred into durum wheat, reduced leaf sodium and raised grain yield on saline soils by 25% in field trials [5].
	19	+- Salt-induced degradation of irrigated land could cost about USD 27.3 billion a year in lost crop production, and case studies show that investing in remediation can be cost-effective [6].
	20	+
	21	+## What would count as progress
	22	+
	23	+No single result settles a question like this; contributions like these would move it forward:
	24	+
	25	+- Field trials of salt-tolerant varieties and management practices across salinity levels, with yields, costs and soil salinity tracked over several seasons and released openly.
	26	+- Validated maps of salinity change at field resolution, combining remote sensing with ground measurements, to target interventions.
	27	+- Cost–benefit analyses comparing remediation, tolerant crops and land-use change for specific regions.
	28	+
	29	+## References
	30	+
	31	+1. Hu, Y. et al. (2023). [100 essential questions for the future of agriculture](https://doi.org/10.1002/moda.5). Modern Agriculture 1(1), 4–12.
	32	+2. FAO (2024). [Global status of salt-affected soils – Main report](https://doi.org/10.4060/cd3044en). Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
	33	+3. Hassani, A. et al. (2021). [Global predictions of primary soil salinization under changing climate in the 21st century](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-26907-3). Nature Communications 12, 6663.
	34	+4. Munns, R. & Tester, M. (2008). [Mechanisms of salinity tolerance](https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.arplant.59.032607.092911). Annual Review of Plant Biology 59, 651–681.
	35	+5. Munns, R. et al. (2012). [Wheat grain yield on saline soils is improved by an ancestral Na⁺ transporter gene](https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2120). Nature Biotechnology 30(4), 360–364.
	36	+6. Qadir, M. et al. (2014). [Economics of salt-induced land degradation and restoration](https://doi.org/10.1111/1477-8947.12054). Natural Resources Forum 38(4), 282–295.
	37	+
	38	+## Source
	39	+
	40	+Imported from [100 essential questions for the future of agriculture, question 5](https://doi.org/10.1002/moda.5), curated by Hu et al. Listed as open in the source (2023) and still an active research question as of 2026-10-20. The statement above is written in our own words; see the source for the original wording, history and discussion.