LAHORE: Pakistan is facing an escalating salinity and water-logging crisis that poses a serious threat to agricultural productivity, food security, and rural livelihoods. Nearly 30 percent of the country’s agricultural land, around 6.67 million hectares, is already affected by salinity and sodicity, experts said. The problem, driven by unsustainable irrigation practices, canal seepage, inadequate drainage systems, and the excessive use of brackish groundwater, continues to expand at an alarming pace. Fertile land is being converted into saline soil at a rate of about 40,000 hectares annually, while salinity-related yield losses are estimated to exceed Rs 20 billion each year. Experts noted that the Indus River system carries nearly 31.6 million tonnes of salt annually, with approximately 20 million tonnes deposited directly into canal command areas. Additionally, more than 1.2 million tubewells extract brackish groundwater, adding an estimated 45 million tonnes of salt to agricultural soils every year. The impact is most severe in the irrigated plains spanning 19.43 million hectares, while nearly 1.4 million hectares of farmland have been completely abandoned due to severe salinization. In the Indus River Delta, reduced freshwater flows have enabled seawater intrusion, rendering over 50 percent of soil samples highly saline, according to the document. Researchers warn that, amid climate change and weak drainage management, salinization rates could increase by up to 10 percent annually, said Dr Abdur Rasheed, Head of the Seed Division at an agricultural services provider company, while speaking to the Business Recorder on Sunday. Co-founder of Agriculture Republic, Aamer Hayat Bhandara, also highlighted that soil salinity has emerged as a major constraint on agricultural productivity in Pakistan, threatening food security and farmers’ livelihoods. In Punjab, large tracts of irrigated farmland are affected by salt accumulation and poor-quality groundwater, leading to yield losses of 30 to 40 percent in wheat and 25 to 35 percent in rice in affected areas of the Indus Plain. At the farm level, experts say this challenge can be mitigated through measures such as improved field drainage, ridge and bed planting, application of gypsum in sodic soils, incorporation of organic matter, efficient and timely irrigation using better-quality water where available, avoidance of over-irrigation, and the adoption of salt-tolerant crop varieties and appropriate crop rotations. Dr Rasheed said his company, Patron Seeds (Pvt) Ltd, in collaboration with the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of the Punjab, has initiated research to mitigate the impact of salinity through the development of salinity-tolerant hybrid rice varieties. Under the research programme, multiple hybrid rice lines were tested across various salt-affected zones, leading to the selection of two promising hybrids. During the 2025 rice season, one hybrid was demonstrated in brackish-water areas of Punjab and salt-affected regions of Sindh, where it produced encouraging results, achieving yields of up to 9.5 tonnes per hectare under harsh conditions with total dissolved solids (TDS) exceeding 2,400 ppm. Encouraged by these results, Patron Seeds plans to conduct large-scale demonstrations during the 2026 season, particularly in severely affected areas where conventional crops are no longer grown, to further validate the hybrid’s performance in degraded soils. The company expressed confidence that the variety would replicate its earlier success and help bring abandoned saline lands back into productive use. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025