DEVELOPMENT AND OPTIMIZATION OF HALOPHYTE BASED FARMING SYSTEMS IN SALT AFFECTED MEDITERRANEAN SOILS Marco Santin, Antonella Castagna, Alessia Mannucci, Lucrezia Pomarè, Annamaria Ranieri

Marco Santin 1 , Antonella Castagna 1 , Alessia Mannucci 1 , Lucrezia Pomarè 1 , Annamaria Ranieri 1

1 Dipartimento di Scienze Agrarie, Alimentari e Agro-ambientali, Università di Pisa, Pisa, Italia

Increasing soil and water salinity is a rising problem in many regions of the Mediterranean area; it severely affects plant growth, limits crop yield, restricts the use of land and contributes for desertification. Approximately 18 million ha, corresponding to 25% of total irrigated land in the Mediterranean area, are salt affected. In Italy, salinization affects almost all regions, and Tuscany, with almost 600.000 ha ranks the second in Italy for area affected by salinity. Underutilization of natural resources and food insecurity are a significant challenge for many Countries. The population in the Mediterranean area is expected to reach 529 million by 2025, which boosts the need to promote a sustainable intensification of agriculture in pursuit of higher yields and productivity. The sustainability of farming systems, aiming to cope with soil and water salinity, could be effectively achieved by using wild salt tolerant plants (halophytes). Exploitation of their potential in agriculture and as source of bioactive molecules is the objective of the PRIMA project HaloFarMs, some specific objectives of which are listed below:  Optimise crop rotation and intercropping systems using selected halophytes and tomato to decrease soil salinity and improve yield  Optimize in vitro protocols for mass clonal propagation of halophytes  Establish the biochemical profile of edible and non-edible biomass ofproduced halophytes and evaluate the efficacy of selected extracts by in vitro and in vivo tests for their valorisation as new foods, source of nutraceuticals, and feed supplement Specifically, we present here preliminary results on the first objective, i.e. yield and quality attributes of tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L., cv Jama) fruit harvested from plants cultivated in monoculture or in intercrop with Salicornia europaea. Each plot contained 26 tomato plants per plot, distributed into two rows, alone (monoculture plots) or co-cultivated with forty Salicornia plants at each side of each tomato rows (intercrop plots). The experiment was carried out in spring-summer 2020 in a randomised block design with three replicates per thesis. The desalting ability of Salicornia was determined by measuring the electric conductibility and Na content of soil before and after plant cultivation. The results indicated a significantly higher yield (+19%) when tomato plants were cocultivated with Salicornia. This result was due to a higher number of fruit (+22%) while the weight of individual fruit did not vary between the two treatments. Evaluation of fruit quality attributes (total soluble sugar content, firmness, pH and titratable acidity) indicates that fruit produced by intercrop plots were significantly firmer (+39%) and sweeter (+16%), and showed a trend toward a higher acidity (titratable acidity +18%, P = 0.070). These preliminary results suggest that cultivation of tomato in saline soils in intercrop with Salicornia could be a successful strategy to allow a higher production of fruit with a better organoleptic quality.

Research supported by the PRIMA project HaloFarMs, Section 2 PRIMA call 2019