Abstract
Having salt-tolerant potatoes is of paramount interest to farmers in salt affected areas, but reliable cultivar-specific parameters on salt tolerance are lacking. To address this issue existing field data on tuber yield on sandy soil at six levels of saline irrigation (0.5, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20 dS m−1) of 13 varieties for which data in two or more consecutive years were available, were analysed year-by-year with the method developed earlier. The method provides estimates of the zero-observed-effect yield (Y0), and two typical salt tolerance parameters, - i.e., a characteristic salinity level and a decline parameter –, as well as information about the uncertainties and correlations between these estimates. The results indicate that all varieties have a similar lethal soil salinity (20–24 dS m−1). However, both yield Y0 as well as salt tolerance parameters differ among cultivars, but for a single variety the estimates vary year by year, and have large uncertainties, underlining the difficulty to obtain robust parameters from single year experiments. The annual variety also hampers the discrimination between varieties. To remedy this, the data from multiple years were united in a single analysis by introducing another – unknown, annually varying - factor that is limiting the yield in the trials. Two ways to describe co-current limitations often used in models were tested. In contrast to the minimum rule, the multiplicative rule is found to provide an acceptable description of the observed yields over all years. This results in a single set of salt tolerance parameters with a narrower uncertainty bound than from single year estimation. It shows that with due account of uncertainties, field tests can be used to identify relatively salt tolerant cultivars, while accounting for between-year yield differences. Most potato cultivars have an ECe90 of about 4–5 dS m−1, but for some it is roughly double, while maintaining good yield, suggesting that these varieties are good candidates for salt adapted agriculture.
Highlights
Salinization of soils is a significant threat to crop production in many parts of the world
Screening tests do not provide the parameters of salt tolerance functions, which would be of paramount interest in crop yield produc tion models
The uncertainty in the curve as a whole is represented by the area within the simultaneous prediction error bounds, whereas no more than 5% of the observations are expected to be outside the non-simultaneous prediction error bounds
Summary
Salinization of soils is a significant threat to crop production in many parts of the world It is aggravated by climate change induced effects, such as increased sea water intrusion in coastal areas and the need for more irrigation due to droughts. The artificial root zone environment of fast screening tests, the limited number of tested salinity levels and the short duration in in vitro screening make it hard to link observed growth rates to final yields in the field. Several of these authors stress the need for additional full field tests. Screening tests do not provide the parameters of salt tolerance functions, which would be of paramount interest in crop yield produc tion models
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