Plant Science prof helps save farmland

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Doug Peters (foreground right), from the University of California Cooperative Extension, assists Dr. Sharon Benes (left) with a field day presentation. Benes and Peters worked with local and state government agencies on drainage water reuse in the Valley's west side farmlands.

by Mary Lisa Russell

It's news that's tough to take "with a grain of salt" -- thousands of acres of Valley farmland are disappearing in the next decade because of salinity and drainage problems. But a professor of plant science at Fresno State is working with colleagues from the University of California and the California Department of Water Resources to save the valuable land.

Plant scientist Sharon Benes, whose specialty is soil salinity and drainage, has been working with local and state government agencies on a study of drainage water reuse in the Valley's west side farmlands. For three years, Benes has been tracking the growth and water use of highly salt-tolerant plants.

The problem for west side farmers lies in the farmland itself -- high soil salinity and problems with shallow water tables. Much of the land needs subsurface drainage to be productive, and farmers must be cautious with the drainage water because of environmental regulations.

What researchers have deemed to be the most environmentally responsible system for drainage water management is a "sequential reuse." This type of reuse, if managed properly, can help decrease environmental concerns for farmers and allow them to reclaim otherwise unusable farmland.

"Getting the land back into an usable state is one of the most important aspects of this study," said Benes. "We can't keep letting west side acreage go out of production. We have to provide an environmentally feasible way to manage for soil salinity and drainage problems, thereby helping the growers, and ultimately our land."

Benes and her colleagues found that saltgrass and pickleweed thrived and transpired significant amounts of water under irrigation with drainage water that contained about two-thirds the salt content of sea water.

Although saltgrass and pickleweed are experimental alternatives to help farmers reclaim some of their farmland, these plants might have a modest potential for other uses.

Neither salt-tolerant plant is considered an optimum crop choice, but they could help west side farmers save their acreage to later grow higher value crops.

Confident with the success of the saltgrass and pickleweed, Benes and her colleagues will continue their studies of different salt-tolerant forages and native plants to determine their usefulness in drainage water reuse systems in the Valley.