Ecology of Saline Soil Microorganisms

The use of plants remedy saline and sodic soils is a low-cost, emerging method, but with little acceptance because of its low profitability. However, some farmers have improved the condition of their soil salinity planting trees resistant to salt. Low-productivity saline soils are not only due to their toxicity resulting salt or were caused by excessive amounts of soluble salts and low soil fertility. Fertility problems are evidenced by the absence of an organic material and minerals, especially N and P. In the latest years, saline soils received a great attention because of the general shortage of arable land and of the increasing demand for ecological restoration of areas affected by secondary salinization processes. This is due to the fact that naturally salt-affected soils have a biotechnological potential in their microbial communities, which represent not only a gene reserve for future exploitation in biotechnological applications, assuming they could be used in some kind of restoration or conservation techniques of saline environments, but they can also serve as model systems for exploring the relationships between diversity and activity at the soil level in selective/limiting situations. As outlined in the introduction, very few studies succeeded in addressing the beta diversity of the microbial species in soils, according to the different salt concentrations and, at a different scale, to bacterial taxa distribution in relation to salinity gradients.