Spanish Ebro Delta acts as testing lab to make rice cultivation resistant to soil salinisation

Wikispanishfood Editorial Team

The Operational Group is coordinated by PRODELTA. The Catalan Institute of Agrifood Research and Technology (IRTA) conducts the research.

“Dry seeding consists of seeding the rice in moist soil uncovered by water. This stops the snails entering the fields and damaging the young plants. However, when there is no layer of fresh water covering the fields, sea water is more likely to enter the soil”, says farmer Miguel Tomàs Ferré. He is involved in the Operational Group. “Once the rice seedlings have grown tall enough to withstand the snail attacks, the fields are inundated intermittently, until the rice plants have reached their full height. The rice fields are continuously monitored to check the soil salinity during this process.”

“We found that flooding the fields intermittently reduces the apple snail population and there is no negative effect on soil salinisation. We also discovered that on sandy soils the yield was slightly less, while on clay soil the yield increased by 3%. We will use these results in the future, since this system is the only one we can use in the lands affected by the invasion of the apple snail. It is the only strategy if we want to keep producing rice”.