Effect of microbial growth and development on chemical properties of saline water

Secondary soil salinization is a major issue for sustaining food grain production in arid and semi-arid region due to the use of poor quality saline water, whichneeds amelioration before to be used for crop irrigation.In this regard, totally 12 saline bacterial isolates from saline water ecosystem, of which three best isolates, namely C8, C10 and C12, identified and used for amelioration of saline water whose electrical conductivity value (EC) ranged between 0.5 and 8.0 dS m-1 over the incubation period of two, five and seven days under laboratory conditions during 2017-20. The C10 and C12 bacterial isolates were highly efficient recording more than 30 % EC value decline but microbial efficiency decreased with increased salt concentration. The five days incubation optimized with 20 % reduction of EC value. However, the biological amelioration of water salinity was highly specific that five days incubation with C12 culture recording amelioration nearly 64 % decline of EC value only in low saline water. In contrast, all the cultures were equally effective on every saline water studied lowering more than 38% in 2.0 dS m-1 saline water, more than 22 % in 4.0 dS m-1 saline water, more than 16 % in 6.0 dS m-1 saline water, and more than 12 % in 8.0 dS m-1saline water for two days incubation period. On the whole, the microbial techniques based saline water amelioration abated 30% reduction of EC value associated with declining of ionic concentrations, such as Ca2+ by 40 %, Mg2+ by 31 %, Na+ by 24 %, SO42- by 18.4 % and Cl- by 10.5 %. The reduced salt build-up and increased crop performance would be the implication and characterization of the isolates is suggested further studies.