A WAY of breeding trees and crops that can survive in the increasingly salty
soil of much of the world’s farmland has been discovered by researchers in
Israel. They have managed to make trees more salt-tolerant, and are now seeing
whether the trick will work with crops such as tomatoes, too.
According to some estimates, more than half of the world’s agricultural land
will become saline in the next half-century. In countries like Israel, where
fresh-water supplies are already overexploited, farmers are being forced to use
salty water for irrigation and will have to use even more in the future.…
