DefinePK

Abstract

ABSTRACT Salinization and water-logging are concomitant, though the intensity of one or the other, or the proportion thereof, depend upon several factors of land and its management. In Pakistan, being an arid/semi-arid land, and the vast plains of Indus Basin and its tributaries allowing irrigational network, the supplemental irrigation has in due course of time brought forth with intensive culture in piecemeal form patches of salt-affected soil and placement of water table at zone affecting culture of common agricultural crops and tree plants. This menace of land was realized even long before the creation of Pakistan, and full-fledged Department of Land Reclamation was established to counter-check the malady; nevertheless, it attained alarming proportion and threatened the very basis of economy of Pakistan. Of course, vast physical outlays in the form of SCARP have been the outcome of very serious deliberations, even involving the expertise at international level; all the same, the land management problem still persists and baffles the intelligentsia.