Dear Farmer John, First, I would like to thank you for the opportunity you have given me to research

the impacts of Salinization more in-depth. Unfortunately, what I hypothesized earlier is rather accurate. With the increase of salinity/salt concentration in your irrigated waters, it can most definitely cause a drastic decline to the growth of your plants. When I experimented on mung beans, it was apparent that not all salt types may cause a sharp decrease in the percent germination of plants, and that a few types can actually increase the percent germination for a bit; however, by using the precautionary principle, I would suggest to steer away from using any type of salt concentration in your plants. High salt concentration inhibits both the germination and growth rate of plants, because they can accumulate and may eventually destroy most of your plants, i.e. decreasing your crop yields. The sources of most salts on salinized lands, such as yours, are from the buildup of salinity by salt minerals that cause its water to eventually evaporated and leave behind just the salts. And if you continue to use over irrigation, this problem will never go away. If you are still skeptical about my experiment, I had the mung beans also grow in distilled water, serving as a control to compare it with the others. If you are wondering if there are other ways to determine the effect of soil salinity in plants, I would be glad to help. These include: plant biomass, growth rate, and even root length (which I have measured in my mung bean experiment). In many countries irrigated agriculture has caused environmental

disturbances such as waterlogging, salinization, and depletion and pollution of water supplies. Since you now have a better understanding of salinization, its time to present the ways in which you can fix these problems. One solution is to water the crop/plants with more water than it needs in order to leech away the salts from the crops/plants roots. Of course, the downside to this method is that it uses a lot of excess water, which means it can be more expensive and may even ruin the crops/plants. Another method is to use new and improved ways of irrigation, like drip irrigation to specifically allocate only necessary amounts of water, or artificial drainage. One thing to consider is to also minimize the use of commercial fertilizers. Please take all of this into account, and if taken seriously, I promise you and your crops will benefit greatly.

Sincerely,