Abstract

Salinity and acidity of soils remain one of the world’s oldest and the most serious environmental problem, which substantially hampers crop and ecosystem productivity in arid and semi arid areas. This problem has been addressed by expensive and energy depleting soil reclamation measures. In this study, we tested salinity and acidity tolerances of ten ligneous species. This Investigation was undertaken in the scope of my thesis in the project’’ agrosylvopastoral economic development of saline and acid sulphated soils in Sine-Saloum by ligneous regeneration’’. It was done in the rural communities of Djilass and Loul Secene, sub-prefecture of Fimela, Department and province of Fatick.

The study consisted to evaluate the ligneous vegetation tolerance in the experimental plot of the project.

The adopted experimental method is a factorial with two factors (type of plot and Species). The first factor (type of plot) has three levels (Pure plot, herbaceous plot and shrubby plot) and the second factor (species) has ten levels (Acacia seyal, Acacia tortilis, Acacia nilotica, Acacia Senegal, Acacia ampliceps, Melaleuca acacioides, Melaleuca viriflora, Prosopis juliflora, Prosopis cineraria and Casuarina equisetifolia). The sites (villages) are taken as repetitions. Three plots are considered in Djilass and Ndoff-Faoye. Each kind of species is planted in 625m² space and the distance between species is 5m*5m. The holes adopted for plantation are 40cm*40cm*40cm. The measured parameters are survival rate, height and stem diameter of species. The plots characterization permits to know the salinity and the acidity of each plot. All the plots are salted and acid but the salinity and acidity degree vary according to the type of plot. The salinity levels range between EC 1.38 ms/cm and EC 14.02 ms/cm and the ph levels vary from 4.74 to 5.9.The species tolerance depends not only on the salinity and acidity degree but also on the species type. These findings indicate that some species tolerate the salinity and acidity and others are sensitive.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.