ABSTRACT
The deleterious impact of high salinity ground water on municipal, industrial, and agricultural water users is felt in a number of ways, including high soap consumption; formation of scale in heating vessels; corrosive attack on distribution pipelines, plumbing systems and appliances; and added water treatment and conditioning costs. As the salinity of a plant's ground water supply increases, plant growth usually is reduced. There have been many attempts to explain how the growth reduction is caused by a salinity increase. Most of those attempts have invoked the concept of physiological drought in some form or other. A. Lauchi and E. Epstein have pointed out that most monocotyledonous halophytes show reduced growth rates at salinity levels exceeding about 10,000 mg/1 solium chloride. Soil salinity in the plant root zone is measured by the US Department of Agriculture Salinity Laboratory as electrical conductivity, which is directly proportional to the salt concentration in the soil water.
