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Saline soils and their reclamation in Tunisia Volume 18, issue 1, Janvier, Février, Mars 2007

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Author
Institut national de recherche en génie rural, eaux et forêts (INRGREF), 17, rue Hédi Karray, BP 10, Ariana 2080, Tunisie

Considering the rarity of soil resources in Tunisia, saline soils have been reclaimed in several semiarid regions of the country, and thus, for decades, several dozens of thousands hectares have been drained. Besides the extensive use of saline soils reclaimed for rainfed crops, a number of saline plains, in particular those of the Mejerda Valley, have intensively been exploited using drainage and irrigation techniques. In these drained plains, the hydrological characteristics of the groundwater table and the physicochemical properties of the soil material, originally saline and sodic, have been modified. A few cases of saline soil reclamation are presented in this paper.