Dr Rao and some very salt tolerant tomatoes

All this sight seeing isn't why I'm here. I'm looking for some answers to using saline water as a viable alternative to fresh water. The International Centre for Biosaline Research (ICBA) in Dubai was the place I'd always intended to visit right from day one. With support from the Islamic Development Bank and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government, ICBA did indeed lived up to my expectations. I'm here to meet Dr Rao who is a Plants Genetics Scientist. He has been working on plant and variety selection for salt tolerance at ICBA for 4 years. I was very excited when we walked into one of ICBA's trial sheds to be greeted by a large tomato salinity trial. Salinity trials for vegetables isn't that common as many people believe vegetables cannot be grown with saline water. This isn't the case as Dr Rao had his trial going with water as high as 20dsm (half seawater) with some good potential. Although the tomatoes are not the only vegetable he plans to trial, it stood out to me that, for a vegetable that is classed as a moderately tolerant species, the tomato has shown the potential for very high levels of salt tolerance. There is plenty of genetic variation out there without modification, coming up with open pollinated varieties that can withstand some very salty water and soil conditions. When I told the researchers there that I was using water that was 4.2dsm they simply smiled and told me anything under 4dsm is considered fresh water here. Talk about bringing a bloke back to earth, it really brings home the fact that most untreated water in the area is highly saline and dealing with it is an every day thing.