ABSTRACT
The saline and sodic soils are vital natural resources in the arid,semiarid, and coastal regions of the world. Its importance is increasingly recognized due to immense pressure on cultivated land for additional food production toward mitigating demand for escalating population growth. The inherited and human-induced many biotic and abiotic stresses of these soils are seriously threatening the agricultural sustainability,food security, and livelihood of agrarian people. The inhospitable physical, chemical and biological properties of the soils due to salt toxicity, poor quality irrigation water, tidal seawater intrusion and impeded natural drainage, prolonged irrigation with salt-containing groundwater, adverse land topography, and lack of awareness are some of the key factors that preclude the possibilities of adoption of standard remedial measures for ensuring profitable crop production. Many region- and climate-specific techno-economically rewarding devices involving agronomical,soil,water,crop,engineering, and bioremediation aspects were successfully developed and adapted to arrest the soil salinity, sodicity, and water logging problems for restoration of unproductive and less productive lands into productive ones. It is now high time to exploit the feasibilities of these technological interventions in an integrated manner to improve the crop, nutrient and water productivity of the saline and sodic soils, hither to uncultivated and unsustainable.
