Use of Salt-Tolerant Plants and Halophytes as Potential Crops in Saline Soils in China

Abstract

Soil salinity affects approximately 800 million hectares of arable lands worldwide. As soil salinization increases and farmland decreases globally due to climate change, irrigation and urbanization, a big challenge is to balance the reducing of soils areas for crop cultivation and the increasing of requirement of food and energy. It is considered as a desirable and sustainable strategy to utilize the saline soils by cultivating the salt-tolerant crop varieties or halophytes for agricultural usage. The cultivation of salt-tolerant plants on saline land has obtained a more and more increasing of interest. In the past a few decades, a lot of work has been done in the utilization of salt-tolerant plants and halophytes for agriculture usage in saline soil in China. The usage value according to the food, vegetables supply, saline land remediation, bioenergy production, and other economic value were briefly summarized. Furthermore, a better method to develop and utilize of saline land and the valuable information for future investigation of saline land were provided. This information is helpful for utilization of salt tolerant plants and halophytes in the sustainable development of saline land worldwide.