Between 11th and 12th October 2018, colleagues working on the SalFar (saline farming) research project met in Lund, Sweden.

During the meeting, Dr Gary Bosworth, School of Geography at the University of Lincoln, presented his findings on the baseline study which explores the scope for saline agriculture and the extent of agricultural land affected by salinisation across the North Sea Region of Europe.

It was also established that LIAT’s Dr Iain Gould and colleagues will also implement trials of different varieties of salt-tolerant crops over the next 2 years.

The EU Interreg funded project early findings have identified that the sources of salinity risk for agricultural soils vary across the North Sea Region of Europe. In the UK, there is concern with seawater flooding but in other countries, saline groundwater is a greater risk.

The summer of 2018, hot weather put huge pressures on the UK’s freshwater resource, leading some farmers to contemplate using brackish water for crop irrigation. If climate change sees more extreme summer weather in the future, the need to explore the salt tolerance of crops in Northern Europe will become ever more pressing.

You can find out more about the project online.