Abstract
There are extended agricultural areas in the world that can be utilized only with irrigation for crop production. Improper irrigation may induce unfavourable processes in the soil (e.g. secondary salinization). To investigate this problem existing in Hungary as well, 12 simple drainage lysimeters – which are useful equipment for the investigation of the water and salt balance of the soil – were used in an irrigation experiment in the Research Institute of Karcag. The basic goal was to investigate the possibility of the production of a salt-sensitive crop (green bean) in areas with unfavourable agro-ecological conditions. 6 lysimeters were irrigated with deionized water, while the other 6 with saline water of 1,600 mg/l salt content. We also used a soil conditioner (Neosol) during the experiment. Analysing the effect of the irrigation quality on the plant height of green beans, it can be established that the plants irrigated with deionized water were averagely 5.3 cm taller than the plants irrigated with saline water. Similar tendencies were characteristic of the average biomass (deionized: 93.5, saline: 62.5 g), the average root mass (deionized: 9.5 g, saline: 8.2 g), the number of pods (deionized: 17.1, saline: 11.9), and the pod yield (deionized: 137.9 g, saline: 85.9 g) values. However, all these values can be improved by soil conditioning combined with the optimization of irrigation.