KARACHI: Keeping in view the increasing scarcity of fresh water in the world, there is a dire need to focus on nature-based solutions to help tackle the challenges posed by food insecurity. Halophytes, for instance, offer great opportunity to utilise unused salty water and saline land and grow crops for food and animal fodder.

These points were shared by experts at a conference which opened at Karachi University (KU) on Monday. Titled ‘Sustainable Development: Halophytes for Green Revolution’, the four-day programme has been organised by the university’s Institute of Sustainable Halophyte Utilisation (ISHU).

Speaking on the second day of the event, Prof Hans-Werner Koyro of Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany, highlighted the importance of halophytes as a future resource to reduce water crisis in the arid world.

Halophytes — plants that can tolerate high concentration of salts — he pointed out, could be used as a potential crop for food, fuel, fibre, fodder and medicines.

“These plants have evolved mechanisms to tolerate high salinity. In many parts of the world, several halophytes are cultivated on commercial scale and even sold on the markets,” he told the audience, emphasising the need for identifying more halophytic crops and agronomic means for their mass-scale cultivation.

He also talked about using biochar, the charcoal produced from plant matter and stored in the soil as a means of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, to deal with increased soil salinisation.

He was of the opinion that cultivation of halophytes on saline land was a viable option to ensure food/fuel security in future and that could also reduce pressure on conventional agriculture.

Prof M. Ashraf, former chairman of the Pakistan Science Foundation (PSF), shared details of his work on salinity tolerance mechanisms in plants. Understanding the mechanisms underlying salinity tolerance, he said, was the key prerequisite to enhance salinity tolerance of crops.

He also talked about the key aspects of plant metabolism which could be utilised as the targets of genetic engineering to develop new crops for saline land.

Dr Benno Boer, adviser science, Unesco (Thailand), spoke about the importance of biosphere reserves, protected areas set aside for conservation purposes and to act as a site for ecological and environmental monitoring and research, and said that there were 669 biosphere reserves in the world. Of them, only two existed in Pakistan.

“There is a need to identify more biosphere reserves in Pakistan especially in the coastal areas. These areas help fight global climate change and also serve humanity in many ways,” he said, adding that the success of many UN Sustainable Development Goals depended on innovative approaches such as using unused saline barren land and salty water for non-conventional halophyte based agriculture.

“We can construct ‘floating mangrove forests’ in tropical oceans, which wouldn’t only help in sequestering rising carbon dioxide, but will also provide several community services such as feedstock for biofuel and fodder,” he explained.

According to him, many artificial islands are being constructed in the world and floating mangroves can be the source of primary productivity. “Successful demonstration of floating mangroves was done in Qatar in 2012. The demonstration site still exists there.”

He also proposed the idea of establishing a “world halophyte garden” to conserve the germ plasm of over 2,000 halophyte species found worldwide.

Prof S.M. Saqlain Naqvi, the Vice Chancellor of Bacha Khan University, Charsadda, presented his research paper on the use of bioengineering techniques for biofuel production.

Intensive use of fossil fuels, he noted, was the leading factor causing global climate change. “Therefore, the world is now looking for environment-friendly fuel options such as biofuel. Biofuels are produced mainly from plant biomass and are both renewable and nearly carbon-neutral. However, in order to avoid competition between food and biofuel crops, halophytes can be cultivated as fuel feedstock, which grow on barren saline land.

“Bioengineering techniques, more efficient enzymes and microbes could be designed to convert halophyte biomass into bioethanol and biodiesel in order to supplement fuel requirements of burgeoning population,” he observed.

Speaking on saline agriculture and its role in sustainable community, Umer Butt of Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company said that saline agriculture had a lot to offer in sustainable development of communities living in the Thar desert.

The company, he said, had collaborated with ISHU to utilise saline water obtained during coal mining for growing halophytic fodder in Thar. The project, he hoped, would help transform lives of poor communities that depended on livestock for their livelihood.

Dr Abdul Hameed Baloch from Lasbela University of Agriculture, Water and Marine Sciences discussed the use of geographic information system (GIS) techniques for studying halophyte diversity. “With this technology, we can efficiently map the vegetation and locate the various plant populations which are under threat. We can locate biodiversity hotspots with high precision,” he observed.

At the conference’s inaugural ceremony held on Monday, experts shared statistics, highlighting how serious the scarcity of fresh water is. Around 3.6bn people, almost half of world’s population, they said, lived in water-scarce conditions and more than 97 per cent of earth’s water was saline.

“About 11pc of the world’s irrigated areas are affected by salinisation. The continuous expansion of salt-affected land is highest in some of the most populated and economically challenged countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan posing a serious threat to sustainable agricultural production,” director of ISHU Dr Bilquees Gul said.

Many desert halophytes, she said, performed important ecosystem services, acted as sand stabilisers and wind breaks. These species, when planted in brackish and saline soils near the edges, naturally help protect the site infrastructure from flooding, sandstorms, and erosion.

“Second, halophytes may provide opportunities for cultivation of fodder and energy crops using saltwater — even seawater — for irrigation. This is a hugely exciting prospect given the current and projected world shortages in fresh water, but remains a relatively unexplored research area,” she said.

Dr Gul also briefed the audience about the institute’s work on halophytes and suggested that this work could contribute to rehabilitating saline land and providing fodder in arid areas in the country.

Published in Dawn, April 18th, 2018