Situation and future prospect of salt balance and adapted irrigation scenarios in the agricultural land of Egypt.
Gad, A. and Abdel-Samie, A. G.
National Research Center, Soils and Water Use Dept.,
Cairo, Egypt
The study is based on recent collected accurate data on volumes and salinities of drainage waters and official data on available irrigation waters. Studying the change in drainage water salinity between years 1986 and 1988 revealed, in general, improvements in areas characterized by drainage water salinity of 750 to 2000 gm/m
3. However, areas whose drainage water salinities ranged 2000 to > 3000 gm / m3 recorded an increase.Salt balance data were calculated in four separate pilot areas with a total area of 150, 000 Feddans. Deposition of salts was found associated with low volumes of applied irrigation waters. Calculating the salt balance on the national level revealed a removal of 13.3 million tons of salts in 1990, from an irrigated area of 7.2 million feddans.
Future prospect for the year 2017 was analyzed on view of the plans to increase the cultivated area by 3.4 million feddans. The estimated salt balance in the year 2017 indicates an addition of 62.2 million tons of salt every year to the irrigated soils, not constituting salts. Salts added also through other sources such as chemical fertilizers and manure. These figures urge the necessity of a tight control on water use for irrigation combined with adoption of modern irrigation and efficient drainage systems. An ultimate necessity to face such situation is to breed and grow high salt- tolerant crops.