Reclamation of a saline and high boron soil in the Coachella Valley of California

Abstract

With the expansion of irrigated agriculture throughout the world, much land now saline or alkaline must be reclaimed. Reported herein are the results of both flushing and leaching salts from a saline-alkali soil in the Coachella Valley of California's Colorado Desert. The paper presents a quantitative evaluation of the effectiveness of removing a salt crust by flushing, and it compares the removal of the usual salts with the re moval of a high concentration of boron. Flushing as a reclamation procedure was found to be ineffective. Leaching was found to remove 80 per cent of the initially high salts with the application of one foot of water for each foot depth of soil considered. Equal leaching of boron required three times as much water.

Recuperação de um solo salinizado após cultivo em ambiente protegido

“…Segundo Rhoades & Loveday (1990) embora tenham sido desenvolvidos modelos determinísticos para simular a recuperação de solos salinos, as estimativas da quantidade de água de lixiviação necessária são baseadas em relações empíricas, derivadas de pesquisas e experiências de campo. Exemplos destes modelos são aqueles desenvolvidos por Reeve et al (1955), van der Molen (1956) e diversos outros modelos apresentados por FAO (1973).…”

Boron Toxicity and Deficiency: A Review

“…However, this concept has been strongly challenged by some investigators (Bowen 1968(Bowen , 1969(Bowen , 1972,Bowen and Nissen 1977;Reisenauer et al 1973 (Wolf 1940;Eaton 1944;Dible and Berger 1952 (L.) Merr.) Ieaves contained the most B (52-100 pg'g-'), the growing tip was next (28-59 pg'g-') and stems contained the least (14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31) Fg'g-').…”

Boron in Water, Soils, and Plants

“…Leaching experiments Reeve et al, 1955;Rhoades et al, 1970b) showed that a large fraction of soil boron can be removed by percolating waters but that the remainder persists even after large amounts of water have been applied.…”