Seawater desalination for crop irrigation-Current status and perspectives

© 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Seawater desalination for sustaining agricultural production has been reported as an alternative water source in some Mediterranean countries and its adoption is also being considered in other regions. Desalinated seawater (DSW) can represent a steady water source, which effectively removes the hydrological constraints for crop production under arid and semiarid conditions. This chapter reviews current irrigation experiences with DSW worldwide, analyzing the revealed key issues for its successful implementation, including (1) the main agronomic concerns, such as low nutrient concentration, crop toxicity risk due to high boron and chloride concentration, or the sodicity risk affecting soil physical properties; (2) the energy requirements for DSW production and allocation, the associated greenhouse gas emissions and the derived cost, as the current limiting factors for its agricultural application; and (3) future research for promoting its sustainability and its development perspectives. Additionally, the chapter contains two demonstrative study cases; the first one deals with the planning and development of DSW supply in semiarid south-eastern Spain, while the second focuses on blending strategies for optimizing DSW use together with other available water resources at the farm scale.