Abstract
Dry regions occupy more than one-third of the Earth’s land area and are inhabited by approximately 16% of the World’s population. In the arid countries, population increase, global climate change, a large number of the nomadic populations as well as over-use of renewable resources such as water has disturbed the sensitive ecological balance. Water resources in many of these countries are dwindling both in quantity and in quality. Such countries suffer from severe shortage of freshwater because of the dry climate and the irregularity of rainfall. Moreover, water resources of large parts of several countries are saline. The soils there are either naturally saline or have been salinized, mainly because of ill-conducted irrigation [1]. The potential utilization of halophytes grown under saline water irrigation would conserve freshwater and will enable crop production in marginal areas [2]. This article aims to draw attention to possible utilization of halophytes as cash crops, particularly in dry and saline ecosystems, and to focus primarily on the potential use of halophytes as animal fodder in arid and semi-arid regions.
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© 2006 Birkhäuser Verlag/Switzerland
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El Shaer, H.M. (2006). Halophytes as cash crops for animal feeds in arid and semi-arid regions. In: Öztürk, M., Waisel, Y., Khan, M.A., Görk, G. (eds) Biosaline Agriculture and Salinity Tolerance in Plants. Birkhäuser Basel. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7643-7610-4_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-7643-7610-4_13
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