Hi all,

Thanks for the responses.

We work in many crops and water qualities in Israel, but I would prefer to focus on one unique crop – banana.

Banana receives large quantities of N and K (~700 kg of K per hectare/year in the form of KCl and ~ 400 of N per hectare/year). Almost no pesticides are applied (almost no insect and disease pressure in Israel for banana). A lot of irrigation (~15,000 cubic tones of water hectare/year)

Cl concentrations in the background water is about 200 ppm. With the KCl fertilizer (applied every irrigation) it reaches 250 ppm.

So there is a lot of salt and water quality is low.

There is plenty of organic matter in the top soil since these amazing plants produce so much biomass every year.

We changed all nitrogen to ammonium or Urea for a reducing effect. There are not a lot of oxidizing actions that we take, and the high levels of irrigation can create a more reducing environment.

So, we think that the problem is salinity.

The system is too intense – too much fertilizers and salts keep soil biology from good activity and expression.

We started using a weekly “wash” irrigation – one day a week with double the amounts of water to wash the salts.

Ideas on how can we break this salt cycle?

The fertilizer that we use:

1. FE-EDTA+HGA+EDDHAS 7.5%

2. MN-EDTA+HGA 3.3%

3. ZN-EDTA+HGA 2.5%

4. CU-EDTA+HGA 0.3%

Best,

Ido