Our efforts have focused on the final stage in the drainage water reuse system, when the concentrated, highly saline drainage is applied to halophytes. Halophytes are plants that are native to saline environments such as coastal salt marshes, and they thrive on salinity. These plants are the only choices for irrigation with concentrated drain water. However, at the low end of the salinity range of concentrated drainage, the more salt tolerant forages such as bermudagrass, siltgrass and Puccinellia, which are not halophytes, may survive and grow reasonably well. More research is needed to demonstrate that the halophytes proposed for re-use cropping systems will thrive under irrigation with the hypersaline, high boron, drainage water of the San Joaquin Valley, and that under these conditions, their water use rates will be sufficiently high to provide the needed reduction in drainage volumes.
Most halophytes are undomesticated plants, having only modest agronomic potential at present.
These salt tolerant forages have better economic potential than the halophytes, in part because of lower salt content in their tissue. Results to date Our research over the past three years suggests that the inclusion of halophytes in drainage water re-use systems has the potential to significantly reduce drainage volumes. We measured high water use rates for two of the candidate halophytes, Salicornia and saltgrass, under irrigation with concentrated drainage effluent from fields near Mendota, California. The drain water applied to these halophytes was the second collection of drain water. We measured the halophyte ET using sunken containers in the field that function as drainage lysimeters.