Salinity Impacts on Lower Murray Horticulture - Final Report

Product Information

The project was developed to test the hypothesis: ‘a depressed leaching efficiency (LE) in the Lower Murray irrigation districts raises the root zone salinity and, improved water use efficiency (WUE) has an upper limit determined by that field’s LE and its variance’. The specific objectives were to:

• Determine/update the salinity relationships for irrigated horticulture along the Lower Murray: Riverland, Sunraysia and western NSW
• Determine the variability of EC (soil water) and leaching efficiency in the field under known soil conditions and irrigation management
• Simulate the performance of horticultural crops under different scenarios of River Murray salinity at Morgan
• Provide input to the implementation of the Salinity Strategy and Integrated Catchment Management Plan of the Murray-Darling Basin.

This report also overarches the suite of milestone reports prepared to generate the new knowledge for managing root zone salinity hazards and to assess the risk of salt accumulation under precision irrigation, with a goal to deliver strategies for minimising yield losses. Three previous reports submitted to the funding agencies contained the outputs of Milestone 1,2, 3 and 4 activities respectively. These reports are: (Biswas et al. 2005a; Biswas et al. 2005c; Schrale and Biswas 2004; Biswas et al. 2005d; Biswas et al. 2006b).