IMPACT OF SOIL SALINITY ON AVAILABLE MACRO NUTRIENTS UPTAKE BY WHEAT PLANT

Abstract

In Egypt, the soil salinity is the mainly constraint to the development of agricultural sector. In the last few decades, the farmers and the government have made a great effort to diminish the hazard of soil salinity. The resistance of soils to salinity processes by human positive actions is known as soil resilience.This study aims to assess the soil salinity and resilience at north of Nile Delta and evaluate their impact on macro nutrients uptake by wheat plant. To fulfill these objectives, (i) field survey for identifying the main soil physical and chemical properties as well as the nutrients status in soils of the study area were carried out, (ii) explore the effects of salinity on the macronutrients uptake and ionic relations, and to (iii) status of macronutrients in soils and wheat plant in salinity environments. The results showed that the textural classes of these soils were clay were determined in cultivated land. In addition, The CEC range between 26.49 to 33.03Cmolc kg-1, total CaCO3 was range between 0.91 to 3.04 % and the gypsum was range between 1.69 to 5.64 %. The dominant soluble cations were Na+ followed by Ca+2 and Mg+2 while K+ was rather low in a descending order. On the other hand, soluble anions were dominated by Cl- and SO4-2. Results on correlations of EC with macronutrients in the soils, it gives strong positively correlation and regression of EC constant with available macronutrients. The present study confirms that at all salinity levels the variation in germination, plant growth, dry matter accumulation, ionic strength and availability of nutrients in seeds and straw could be better explored in determining the tolerance capacity of the wheat cultivars.