Soil Chemistry and Plant Nutrition Department

Soluble salts irrigation water could be built up in the soil profile and the root zone, which could affect the chemical properties of soils and fertility/nutritional status of plants grown on these soils. The major effects of such an accumulation in soils are: soil salinization, soil sodification and malnutrition of plants. The measures to alleviate each of these hazards are quite different. By growing the demand for the use of unconventional and hyper saline water resources in irrigation, the new environmental concerns have been raised, considering the fate of salts and pollutants added to the soil. finding a proper solution for these questions at the present and for future is the vision of Soil Chemistry and Plant Nutrition Department, National Salinity Research Center (NSRC).

In addition to the research activities the central laboratory works also under the umbrella of Soil chemistry and plant nutrition department. The laboratory is fully furnished with the most up-to-date salinity research equipments including ceramic suction cups, salinity bridge, EM-38, Teta Probe, four electrode, leaching apparatus, pressure plates apparatus, TRIME (TDR), soil and water samplers, flame photometer, spectrophotometer, electrical conductivity meter, pH meter, Oxygen meter, centrifuge, soils saturation extractor and shaker.

The missions of the Department are:

· Finding a solution for national/ regional problems in salt affected soils (SAS) like dust storms.

· Collaboration with Mega R&D projects at the national scale.

· To predict the fate of solutes and pollutants in soils irrigated with unconventional water resources.

· Classification of different salinity/ sodicity categories based on the national/local data.

· Assessment and monitoring of soil salinity at different scales.

· Finding the economic and sustainable measures for alleviation of saline sodic soils.

· Determination of fertilizer requirement of crops grown under saline conditions.

The highlighted activities of the department could be summarized as below