Deliverable 3. Salt response of protected horticultural crops (UNIPI)

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A study was conducted on the response of horticultural crops to salinity with particular emphasis on crop yield and produce quality under saline conditions. In particular, the work aimed to distillate from the existing literature i) how the response to salinity in selected protected horticultural crops is influenced by genotype (variety and cultivar), crop stage, type of ions (e.g. Na, Cl, SO4, and macronutrient), growing system (soil, substrate, water culture, etc.), crop transpiration (ET) and irrigation regime; ii) the factors responsible for yield reduction in saline environment (e.g. reduced fruit growth and/or fruitset, shorter growing cycle due to enhanced plant senescence, higher incidence of fruit and/or leaf disorders, etc.); iii) strategies and methods to counteract or reduce the negative effects of saline water on crop performance (ET reduction, improvement of mineral nutrition, use of growth regulators, CO2 enrichment); iv) what species are positively influenced by moderate salinity (salinity as resource, not as a constraint) and/or could be used in a cascade cropping system (salt-tolerant crop grown with salt-enriched nutrient solution flushing out from culture with sensitive crop; see task 3.3.).

The work was bibliographic in nature, but it did not intend to produce a paper, as so many excellent reviews have been published  in scientific journals or as book chapter, recently too (e.g. Sonneveld, 1999 - Effect of salinity on substrate grown vegetables and ornamentals in greenhouse horticulture). Rather, an effort was done to produce a sort of salt-response data sheet (folio) that could be used in DSS1-2.

The study concerned the six horticultural crops that were selected at the meeting in Cairo on the basis of their economic importance in the Mediterranean Regions.

Information were collected by electronic searching in CAB ABSTRACT (1973-present), BIOLOGICAL ABSTRACT (1995-present) and CURRENT CONTENTS (1996-present) databases. Some data were also derived from the experiments conducted during the first year by several partners University of Pisa and from publications provided by other AUA and IMAG.