Saline water can be reused to irrigate sugarbeets, but sugar may be low

Salt is currently being transported into the San Joaquin Valley via rivers and irrigation water at about three times the rate that it is being removed, endangering the productivity of agricultural land. As a possible salt-management solution, the San Joaquin Valley Drainage Implementation Program seeks to reuse saline water, such as tile drainage water or shallow well water, in crop production. Sugarbeet is a deep-rooted, salt-tolerant crop that can be used as part of a cyclic reuse program to reduce drainage-water volume and conserve high-quality water. Although sugarbeets grown with saline water produced adequate yields on test plots, sugar percentages declined because nitrogen also was present in the irrigation water source. For this reason, irrigating sugarbeets with alternative water sources is more complex, requiring accounting of nitrogen in reused water together with soil nitrogen to assure adequate crop quality.