Indigenous people have been very smart and creational using scarce water resources. For instance, In Africa they have been using the buried clay pot irrigation (pitcher irrigation) even for field crops with very water use sufficiency. In Yemen, they use spit irrigation through water harvest, convey to agricultural fields and merging the clay soil surrounded by earth wall of 1 m elevation. Then water is conveyed to lower plots within the watershed. After water fully absorbed by the soil, farmers get two yields first with short rooted crop and second with deep rooting plant. I Syria and Lebanon, some farmers use alternate irrigation of rows with drip irrigation applying alternate deficit irrigation to save water. Agricultural research institutions can support these native practices by providing good productivity, drought resistant, seeds. With the development of biosaline agriculture, farmers in Gulf countries increasingly and successfully use salt tolerant feed and food crops and irrigate with seawater.
1. Given the global scope of the CoCoFe, do you think the objectives are appropriate? If not, how would you add to them or modify them?
The objectives are appropriate. But I believe beside policy makers and regulations we should also include and address farmers as fertilizer users to provide capacity building.
2. How should be the CoCoFe be structured to have the maximum positive impact?
It should include the food security issues, public health problems; environment related aspects of nutrient buildup, leaching, migration with erosion-sedimentation, ground water pollution, fertilizer quality and byproducts. It can also include the integrated soil fertility and productivity assessment and management with the concept of balanced state of nutrient in relation to soil and water pools, health hazards, environmental and economic aspects of fertilizer application.
3. Who would be the best audience for the CoCoFe to meet our objectives and how could we broaden and diversify this audience to increase its influence?
Address also farmers, associations and cooperatives of farmers, consumers notably gender, students at all levels (with simplified stories for children and more complicated booklets or leaflets for middle and high schools). Even the university disciplines not related to soil and irrigation/plant production must go through curricula related to food security/fertilizer application interaction and interface with special attention to public health and environmental protection.
4. What should the scope of the CoCoFe be? Which nutrient input sources should be included; only synthetic fertilizers, or also manure, biosolids, compost, etc.? Should other products such as bio-stimulants, nitrification inhibitors, urease inhibitors, etc., be included as well?
Yes in the view of balanced plant nutrition, all these aspects should be included plus the physical ameliorators of water content in the soil as fertilizers and salts might also concentrate in these "polymers" at the depth of their application and create salinity problems.
5. Will the CoCoFe assist in promoting responsible and judicious use of fertilizers? Why or why not? What other suggestions do you have to help the CoCoFe meet our objectives?
To promote responsible and judicious use of fertilizers, CoCOFe must be presented in friendly and simple way, accessible to decision makers, farmers, housekeepers with possibility of controling food quality and tracing back. I suggest to encourage MS to carry the assessment and mapping of soil fertility, soil and water quality, landuse planning based on land quality and suitability to promote multifunctional landuse only on soils with low background values of heavy metals and absence of pesticide residues and high concentration of nitrates and nitrites.
Dr. Talal Darwish
Introducing salt tolerant crops to the coastal Lebanese area
Seawater intrusion into coastal areas threaten agricultural biodiversity and reduces the selection of cultivable cash crops. The Lebanese coastal area is affected by groundwater salinity resulting from the reduction of surrounding recharge zone caused by urban expansion and seawater intrusion into coastal aquifer largely used for irrigation of greenhouse and open field vegetable and fruit crops. To overcome this situation and fill the gaps in food production, salt tolerant millet (Pennisetum Glaucum) and okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) were introduced for the first time in 2016-2017 and 2018-2019 by the IAEA-FAO joint project: RAS-5072- Developing Effective Practices to Combat Desertification. We tested the performance of these crops for biomass production using different level of saline irrigation water (2-4-8-12 dSm-1 for forage millet and 6, 9, 12 and 15 dSm-1 for okra). Results showed the possibility of irrigating both crops on the widely spread sandy loam soil without economic and environmental losses using water with ECw equivalent to 8 and 12 dS m-1, respectively. Millet provided higher dry matter and showed good ability for N recovery and applied fertilizers N uptake irrespective of the level of salinity. Okra provided high yield under high water salinity level reaching 12 dS m-1 while maintaining optimal canopy temperature and chlorophyll content. He paper on okra performance under salinity stress is under review. We attached the published article on millet. Results indicate good potential for disseminating the cropping of forage millet and okra on the salinity affected coastal areas of drylands to secure a cover summer crop, support food production and biodiversity, provide additional source of feed crops and reduce the import of forage and meat in the country.