What is CSSRI and when was it founded?

CSSRI — the ICAR–Central Soil Salinity Research Institute — is India's dedicated national research institute for the reclamation and productive use of salt-affected lands and saline groundwaters. It is headquartered at Kachhwa Road, Karnal 132001, Haryana, on the same Karnal ICAR cluster that hosts NDRI, IIWBR and NBAGR. CSSRI was established in 1969 under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in direct response to the rapid emergence of secondary salinity and waterlogging in the newly created canal command areas of north-west India — where Green-Revolution irrigation expansion in Punjab, Haryana, western UP and Rajasthan was raising water tables and pushing salts to the root zone. CSSRI reports to ICAR under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW).

Where is CSSRI located and what are its regional research stations?

CSSRI's main campus is at Kachhwa Road, Karnal 132001, Haryana, with an attached experimental farm at Nain and long-term saline / sodic experimental plots. Because the geography and chemistry of salt-affected soils vary dramatically across India, CSSRI runs regional research stations at four contrasting sites: (1) Canning Town, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal — coastal saline soils of the Sundarbans delta, waterlogged and periodically inundated by tidal surges; (2) Bharuch, Gujarat — coastal saline soils of the Narmada–Tapi estuarine zone; (3) Anand, Gujarat — salt-affected coastal and inland pockets in central Gujarat, in collaboration with Anand Agricultural University; and (4) Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh — alkali / sodic soils (usar / bhur / kallar lands) of the Indo-Gangetic plain. This four-station network lets CSSRI cover inland saline, inland sodic, coastal saline and estuarine saline conditions in parallel.

How big is India's salt-affected area, and how is it distributed?

CSSRI's national assessments — consolidated in its Salt-Affected Soils of India atlas and updated periodically with NBSS&LUP and state remote-sensing centres — estimate that roughly 6.73 million hectares of India's cultivable land are salt-affected. Of this, approximately 2.9 million ha are classified as saline (dominant chloride and sulphate salts, common in coastal Gujarat, Sundarbans West Bengal, coastal Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and parts of arid Rajasthan) and about 3.8 million ha as sodic / alkali (dominant sodium carbonate–bicarbonate, high exchangeable sodium percentage, common in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and parts of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh). Coastal saline soils affect ~1.7 million ha across nine coastal states and the two coastal Union Territories. Salt-affected wastelands together represent one of India's largest single reservoirs of low-productivity land available for reclamation and productivity gains.

What is sub-surface drainage and how did CSSRI develop it for Haryana and Rajasthan?

Sub-surface drainage (SSD) — also called horizontal sub-surface drainage — is CSSRI's flagship engineering technology for reclaiming waterlogged saline soils in canal command areas. Perforated PVC or corrugated pipe drains are laid at a design depth of about 1.5–2 m below the surface, at a lateral spacing of 25–75 m depending on soil hydraulic conductivity, and connected to a collector drain that discharges saline drainage water to an outlet. The system lowers the water table below the root zone and flushes accumulated salts out of the profile with each irrigation cycle. CSSRI, working with the Haryana State Government, ICID and the Netherlands / Dutch cooperation programme in the 1980s and 1990s, standardised SSD design and implementation in the waterlogged saline pockets of Rohtak, Jhajjar, Sonipat, Sirsa and Hisar districts of Haryana, and in the Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojana (IGNP) command in Rajasthan. Reclaimed SSD land in Haryana has typically moved from zero or very low productivity back to wheat and rice yields close to the district average within 2–3 seasons.

How does CSSRI reclaim sodic / alkali (usar) soils, and what is the role of gypsum?

Sodic reclamation is a chemistry problem, not a drainage problem: sodic soils have low salinity but very high exchangeable sodium, which destroys soil structure, causes surface crusting, and blocks water infiltration. CSSRI's standardised reclamation package for sodic (usar) soils centres on gypsum (calcium sulphate, CaSO₄·2H₂O) application — usually 25–50% of the soil's gypsum requirement, applied as fine (<2 mm) mineral gypsum or phosphogypsum, incorporated into the surface 10–15 cm and then leached in with adequate irrigation. The calcium replaces sodium on the exchange complex; the displaced sodium leaches downward. Reclamation is completed by Sesbania (dhaincha) green manuring for organic matter, cultivation of a salt-tolerant rice variety in the first kharif (typically CSR-10, CSR-27, CSR-30 or CSR-36), and follow-up with a salt-tolerant wheat (KRL series) in rabi. This gypsum-Sesbania-rice-wheat package, developed and validated at CSSRI Karnal and the CSSRI Lucknow station on the massive UP sodic belt, is the technical basis for the sodic-land reclamation projects executed under the Ministry of Agriculture and multiple state land-development corporations, and for the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project financed by the World Bank across successive phases.

What are the CSR rice, KRL wheat and CS mustard varieties?

CSSRI's plant-breeding programme has released a nationally used series of salt-tolerant crop varieties, each notified after multi-location trials on sodic and saline soils. The CSR rice series — CSR-10, CSR-13, CSR-23, CSR-27, CSR-30 (a salt-tolerant Basmati), CSR-36, CSR-43, CSR-46 and CSR-56 among others — are non-Basmati and Basmati rices bred for tolerance to sodicity, salinity or both, suitable for kharif planting on freshly reclaimed sodic land or saline coastal land. The KRL wheat series — including KRL-1-4, KRL-19, KRL-210 and KRL-283 — provides salt-tolerant rabi wheat for the same reclaimed lands, developed jointly by CSSRI Karnal with IIWBR. CSSRI has also contributed salt-tolerant mustard (CS series) and forage / fodder lines. These varieties are the biological pillar without which the engineering (SSD) and chemical (gypsum) pillars of reclamation would produce reclaimed land with no cultivar options for the first years of cropping.

What is CSSRI's saline-water and cyclic-irrigation research?

In large parts of arid and semi-arid India — especially western Rajasthan, western Haryana, southern Punjab and parts of Gujarat — irrigation groundwater is itself saline (EC often 4–15 dS/m). CSSRI's saline-water agriculture research addresses how such water can still be used productively without permanently damaging the soil. Key packages include: (1) cyclic irrigation — alternating a saline groundwater irrigation with a fresh (canal) irrigation to keep root-zone salinity within crop tolerance; (2) blending — mixing saline groundwater with canal water in tanks or fields to reduce the EC of the applied water; (3) crop and cultivar choice — selecting salt-tolerant CSR / KRL varieties or salt-tolerant crops (barley, mustard, cotton, Salvadora, Suaeda) in place of highly sensitive crops (pulses, rice on light soils); and (4) mandatory drainage or leaching fraction in the design. These packages, tested at CSSRI's Bikaner-cluster experimental sites and Bharuch station, are embedded in the AICRP on Management of Salt-Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture, an all-India coordinated project that CSSRI runs.

What are halophytes and Salicornia, and what is CSSRI's role in halophyte agriculture?

Halophytes are plant species that are physiologically adapted to grow in high-salinity environments — coastal marshes, saline inland flats, mangrove fringes — where conventional (glycophyte) crops cannot survive. CSSRI's halophyte research programme, particularly at its Bharuch and Anand stations for the Gujarat coast, evaluates species such as Salicornia brachiata (a succulent halophyte producing edible tender shoots and oilseed-quality seed), Suaeda maritima and Suaeda nudiflora (leafy halophytes), Atriplex species (halophyte fodder shrubs), Salvadora persica (a halophyte oilseed tree yielding pilu seed oil), and mangrove associates. Salicornia in particular has emerged as an economically interesting crop for coastal saline wasteland — its seed oil has fatty-acid profile similar to safflower and can be exported for cosmetic or food-industry use, and the crop can be irrigated with seawater or brackish groundwater on land that would otherwise be unusable. CSSRI's halophyte germplasm and agronomy is a strategic reserve for climate-resilient use of India's coastal saline belts.

How does CSSRI connect to Soil Health Cards, PMKSY, NMSA and RKVY?

CSSRI's outputs are woven into several Central schemes. (1) The Soil Health Card scheme uses CSSRI-derived thresholds for classifying soil salinity (ECe) and sodicity (ESP, SAR) and CSSRI-standardised laboratory methods, and CSSRI has trained state soil-testing lab staff on saline/sodic analytics. (2) PMKSY — Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, particularly the Har Khet Ko Pani and Watershed Development components — draws on CSSRI's drainage and reclamation prescriptions when sanctioning projects in canal-command waterlogged pockets and in coastal saline tracts. (3) NMSA — the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture under the NAPCC — includes salt-affected soils under its soil-health and rainfed-area sub-missions, and CSSRI provides the technical package. (4) RKVY's Rainfed Area Development window has funded state-level reclamation of sodic and saline lands based on CSSRI technology packages, and the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project (executed by UP Bhumi Sudhar Nigam) is the largest single field application of the CSSRI gypsum-Sesbania-CSR-KRL package.

CSSRI — ICAR–Central Soil Salinity Research Institute, Karnal (Haryana): India's Nodal Institute for Salt-Affected Soil Reclamation, Sub-Surface Drainage, Sodic-Land Gypsum Amelioration, Saline Water Agriculture and Salt-Tolerant Rice, Wheat and Mustard Varieties

Q: What are the CSR rice, KRL wheat and CS mustard varieties?

CSSRI's plant-breeding programme has released a nationally used series of salt-tolerant crop varieties, each notified after multi-location trials on sodic and saline soils. The CSR rice series — CSR-10, CSR-13, CSR-23, CSR-27, CSR-30 (a salt-tolerant Basmati), CSR-36, CSR-43, CSR-46 and CSR-56 among others — are non-Basmati and Basmati rices bred for tolerance to sodicity, salinity or both, suitable for kharif planting on freshly reclaimed sodic land or saline coastal land. The KRL wheat series — including KRL-1-4, KRL-19, KRL-210 and KRL-283 — provides salt-tolerant rabi wheat for the same reclaimed lands, developed jointly by CSSRI Karnal with IIWBR. CSSRI has also contributed salt-tolerant mustard (CS series) and forage / fodder lines. These varieties are the biological pillar without which the engineering (SSD) and chemical (gypsum) pillars of reclamation would produce reclaimed land with no cultivar options for the first years of cropping.

Q: What is CSSRI's saline-water and cyclic-irrigation research?

In large parts of arid and semi-arid India — especially western Rajasthan, western Haryana, southern Punjab and parts of Gujarat — irrigation groundwater is itself saline (EC often 4–15 dS/m). CSSRI's saline-water agriculture research addresses how such water can still be used productively without permanently damaging the soil. Key packages include: (1) cyclic irrigation — alternating a saline groundwater irrigation with a fresh (canal) irrigation to keep root-zone salinity within crop tolerance; (2) blending — mixing saline groundwater with canal water in tanks or fields to reduce the EC of the applied water; (3) crop and cultivar choice — selecting salt-tolerant CSR / KRL varieties or salt-tolerant crops (barley, mustard, cotton, Salvadora, Suaeda) in place of highly sensitive crops (pulses, rice on light soils); and (4) mandatory drainage or leaching fraction in the design. These packages, tested at CSSRI's Bikaner-cluster experimental sites and Bharuch station, are embedded in the AICRP on Management of Salt-Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture, an all-India coordinated project that CSSRI runs.

Q: What are halophytes and Salicornia, and what is CSSRI's role in halophyte agriculture?

Halophytes are plant species that are physiologically adapted to grow in high-salinity environments — coastal marshes, saline inland flats, mangrove fringes — where conventional (glycophyte) crops cannot survive. CSSRI's halophyte research programme, particularly at its Bharuch and Anand stations for the Gujarat coast, evaluates species such as Salicornia brachiata (a succulent halophyte producing edible tender shoots and oilseed-quality seed), Suaeda maritima and Suaeda nudiflora (leafy halophytes), Atriplex species (halophyte fodder shrubs), Salvadora persica (a halophyte oilseed tree yielding pilu seed oil), and mangrove associates. Salicornia in particular has emerged as an economically interesting crop for coastal saline wasteland — its seed oil has fatty-acid profile similar to safflower and can be exported for cosmetic or food-industry use, and the crop can be irrigated with seawater or brackish groundwater on land that would otherwise be unusable. CSSRI's halophyte germplasm and agronomy is a strategic reserve for climate-resilient use of India's coastal saline belts.

Q: How does CSSRI connect to Soil Health Cards, PMKSY, NMSA and RKVY?

CSSRI's outputs are woven into several Central schemes. (1) The Soil Health Card scheme uses CSSRI-derived thresholds for classifying soil salinity (ECe) and sodicity (ESP, SAR) and CSSRI-standardised laboratory methods, and CSSRI has trained state soil-testing lab staff on saline/sodic analytics. (2) PMKSY — Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, particularly the Har Khet Ko Pani and Watershed Development components — draws on CSSRI's drainage and reclamation prescriptions when sanctioning projects in canal-command waterlogged pockets and in coastal saline tracts. (3) NMSA — the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture under the NAPCC — includes salt-affected soils under its soil-health and rainfed-area sub-missions, and CSSRI provides the technical package. (4) RKVY's Rainfed Area Development window has funded state-level reclamation of sodic and saline lands based on CSSRI technology packages, and the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project (executed by UP Bhumi Sudhar Nigam) is the largest single field application of the CSSRI gypsum-Sesbania-CSR-KRL package.

The ICAR–Central Soil Salinity Research Institute (CSSRI), headquartered at Kachhwa Road, Karnal 132001, Haryana, is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)'s nodal institute for research on the reclamation and productive use of salt-affected soils and saline groundwaters across India. It sits on the same Karnal ICAR cluster as NDRI, IIWBRand NBAGR, making Karnal one of India's densest concentrations of ICAR central institutes. CSSRI was set up in 1969 as a direct policy response to the rapid build-up of secondary salinity and waterlogging in the newly-created canal command areas of Punjab, Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan — a downside of Green-Revolution irrigation expansion where rising water tables were bringing salts to the root zone and rendering thousands of hectares of prime irrigated land progressively less productive. CSSRI works closely with IARI, IIWBR, the state agricultural universities and state land-reclamation corporations, and its outputs are embedded in Central schemes including the Soil Health Card scheme, PMKSY, Per Drop More Crop, NMSA, RKVY and the World Bank-financed UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project.

At a glance

Body type: Central research institute of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), under DARE / MoAFW.
Founded: 1969 under ICAR.
Headquarters: Kachhwa Road, Karnal 132001, Haryana; attached experimental farm at Nain.
Regional research stations: Canning Town (South 24 Parganas, West Bengal — coastal saline / Sundarbans); Bharuch (Gujarat — coastal saline); Anand (Gujarat — inland / coastal saline, with Anand Agricultural University); Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh — sodic / alkali usar).
Geographic mandate: All of India's salt-affected areas — approximately 6.73 million ha (2.9 million ha saline + 3.8 million ha sodic; 1.7 million ha coastal saline).
Flagship engineering technology: Sub-surface (horizontal) drainage for waterlogged saline canal-command lands.
Flagship chemical technology: Gypsum + Sesbania green manuring for sodic / alkali reclamation.
Flagship biological technology: CSR salt-tolerant rice series (including CSR-30 Basmati); KRL salt-tolerant wheat series; CS salt-tolerant mustard.
Halophyte research: Salicornia, Suaeda, Atriplex, Salvadora persica for coastal saline wastelands.
AICRP coordination: All India Coordinated Research Project on Management of Salt-Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture (AICRP-SAS&USW).
Website: cssri.res.in.

Why CSSRI exists — the Green Revolution's salinity legacy

When the Bhakra, Beas, Sutlej-Yamuna and other major canal networks of north-west India were extended in the 1950s and 1960s to underpin the Green Revolution, the intended benefit was massive: assured irrigation for wheat and rice in the historic granaries of Punjab and Haryana. But the extended canal irrigation carried an unintended hydrological cost. In flat, poorly-drained terrain with slowly permeable sub-soils, continuous canal irrigation raised regional water tables from historic 15–20 m depth to within 1–3 m of the surface. As the water table rose into the root zone, capillary rise brought dissolved salts to the surface; evaporation concentrated those salts; and over one to two decades, thousands of hectares of prime irrigated land in Haryana's Rohtak, Jhajjar, Sonipat, Sirsa and Hisar districts, in Rajasthan's IGNP command, and in parts of southern Punjab progressively turned into waterlogged saline wasteland. Independently, the sodic (alkali) belt of the Indo-Gangetic plain — usar / kallar lands in UP and Bihar, especially in Raebareli, Sultanpur, Pratapgarh, Etawah and Kanpur Dehat districts — had been low-productivity for generations because of naturally high exchangeable sodium. The Government of India established CSSRI at Karnal in 1969 to build a dedicated national research capability on both these problems: engineered reclamation of Green-Revolution induced saline waterlogging, and chemical / biological reclamation of the natural sodic belt.

Regional stations — matching the geography of salinity

Salt-affected soils in India are not one problem. Their chemistry, water-table behaviour and cropping options vary sharply between coastal delta, coastal estuary, inland canal-command and inland natural-sodic terrain. CSSRI therefore operates four regional research stations, each matched to a distinct salt-affected geography:

RRS Canning Town (South 24 Parganas, West Bengal): works on coastal saline soils of the Sundarbans delta — fine-textured, waterlogged, periodically inundated by tidal saline water, with salinity varying seasonally between the monsoon (fresh) and dry season (saline). Research covers salt-tolerant rice varieties for the coastal ecology, integrated rice-fish-poultry systems, brackish-water aquaculture integration, and cyclone-resilience of coastal farming systems.
RRS Bharuch (Gujarat): covers the coastal saline soils of the Narmada–Tapi estuarine zone and adjacent salt-affected inland pockets in central Gujarat. Halophyte agronomy (Salicornia, Salvadora), saline-water cotton and safflower, and mangrove-fringe farming systems are focal areas.
RRS Anand (Gujarat): operates in collaboration with Anand Agricultural University (AAU) on salt-affected coastal and inland pockets of central Gujarat. Integrated farming systems on reclaimed saline land and dairy / fodder integration for salt-affected small farms are important themes here (Anand is also the seat of the cooperative dairy sector under NDDB).
RRS Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh):is CSSRI's centre for research on sodic / alkali (usar) soils of the Indo-Gangetic plain. The Lucknow station is the technical backbone of the multi-phase UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Projectexecuted by UP Bhumi Sudhar Nigam with World Bank financing — arguably the largest single field application of ICAR reclamation science in India's history, covering hundreds of thousands of hectares of previously uncultivable usar land.

Sub-surface drainage — the SSD package for waterlogged saline lands

Sub-surface drainage (SSD), also called horizontal sub-surface drainage, is CSSRI's flagship engineering technology for reclaiming waterlogged saline soils in canal command areas — the Haryana / Rajasthan / western UP problem. The technology is simple in concept and demanding in execution:

Design: perforated corrugated PVC drain pipes (75–100 mm diameter for laterals, larger for collectors), wrapped in a synthetic geotextile or gravel envelope to prevent silting, are laid at a design depth of typically 1.5–2 m below the surface. Lateral spacing depends on soil hydraulic conductivity (typically 25–75 m for medium-textured soils) and design drainage coefficient. Laterals discharge into a collector drain, which outfalls to a disposal channel or a saline drainage pond.
Function: the SSD system holds the water table below the root zone, so upward salt movement stops. Irrigation water applied at the surface percolates through the profile, picks up salts, and is intercepted by the drains and discharged. After 2–3 crop seasons, root-zone salinity typically drops from EC of 8–15 dS/m to below 4 dS/m, and yields of wheat and rice recover close to the surrounding non-affected district average.
India programmes: the Indo-Dutch cooperation programme with CSSRI in the 1980s–1990s standardised SSD design in Haryana. Successive Haryana state schemes and RKVY windows have applied SSD across the waterlogged tracts of Rohtak, Jhajjar, Sonipat, Sirsa and Hisar. Similar work under CSSRI supervision has been implemented in the IGNP command in Rajasthan.
Disposal challenge: because the drainage effluent is saline, safe disposal — via evaporation ponds, dilution in main drains, or restricted use for salt-tolerant crops — is a standing research and policy concern that CSSRI continues to address.

Gypsum reclamation of sodic (usar) soils

Sodic reclamation is a chemistry problem: sodic soils have low soluble salts but very high exchangeable sodium (Exchangeable Sodium Percentage, ESP, typically >15%), which disperses clay, destroys soil aggregation, causes hard surface crusting and extremely slow water infiltration. Without correcting the sodium on the exchange complex, drainage alone cannot reclaim the land. CSSRI's standardised sodic-reclamation package is:

Soil analysis: measure pH, ESP and gypsum requirement (GR) on a composite surface (0–15 cm) sample at a certified soil-testing laboratory using CSSRI-standardised methods.
Gypsum application:apply fine (<2 mm) mineral gypsum or phosphogypsum at 25–50% of the calculated gypsum requirement (typically 5–15 t/ha for moderately-severely sodic land), broadcast on the surface and incorporate into the top 10–15 cm with a harrow or rotavator.
Leaching irrigation: immediately after incorporation, ponding-irrigate the field with ~15–20 cm of good quality water and allow it to leach through. Calcium from gypsum replaces sodium on the exchange complex; the displaced sodium leaches downward with the water.
Sesbania green manuring: sow Sesbania aculeata / bispinosa (dhaincha) as a green manure in the first kharif after leaching, and plough it in at 45–55 days. This adds organic matter and biological nitrogen, further stabilising soil structure.
Salt-tolerant cropping: follow the green manure with a salt-tolerant CSR rice variety (CSR-10, CSR-27, CSR-30, CSR-36) in the same kharif, and a salt-tolerant KRL wheat in rabi. From the second year, most non-tolerant crops can also be grown as sodicity subsides.

This gypsum-Sesbania-CSR-KRL package, developed and validated at CSSRI Karnal and RRS Lucknow, is the technical basis for the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project executed across successive World Bank-financed phases by UP Bhumi Sudhar Nigam, and for similar state-scheme reclamation of usar lands in Bihar and Haryana.

Salt-tolerant crop varieties — CSR rice, KRL wheat, CS mustard

Reclamation engineering (SSD) and chemistry (gypsum) buy the farmer a soil that will hold seed; but if there are no salt-tolerant cultivars available for the early years of cropping, the reclaimed land quickly reverts. CSSRI's plant-breeding programme has released a nationally-used series of salt-tolerant varieties in the three main north Indian irrigated crops:

CSR rice series (kharif): CSR-10, CSR-13, CSR-23, CSR-27, CSR-30 (a salt-tolerant Basmati aromatic rice), CSR-36, CSR-43, CSR-46 and CSR-56 among others. These varieties tolerate sodicity, salinity or both, and are the standard first-crop for freshly reclaimed usar in UP and coastal saline land in West Bengal / Odisha / Gujarat.
KRL wheat series (rabi): KRL-1-4, KRL-19, KRL-210, KRL-283 — salt-tolerant wheats developed jointly by CSSRI Karnal and IIWBR Karnal, for rabi cultivation on the same reclaimed sodic / saline land after the kharif CSR rice.
CS mustard series (rabi oilseed): salt-tolerant mustard varieties for oilseed on reclaimed saline / sodic land, important for farmer income diversification.
Salt-tolerant fodder and forage: CSSRI has also evaluated and recommended salt-tolerant grasses (Leptochloa fusca / Kallar grass, Sporobolus, Cenchrus) and legume forages (Sesbania, Melilotus) for the early phase of reclamation, when grain crops are difficult.

Saline groundwater — cyclic irrigation and blending

In extensive tracts of arid and semi-arid India — western Rajasthan, western Haryana, southern Punjab, parts of Gujarat and interior Karnataka — the shallow and deep groundwater accessible to farmers is itself saline (EC often 4–15 dS/m, sometimes higher). Absent fresh canal water, this saline groundwater is the only irrigation resource; using it naively will progressively salinise the soil and kill sensitive crops. CSSRI's saline-water agriculture research — coordinated through the All India Coordinated Research Project on Management of Salt-Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture (AICRP-SAS&USW) — has developed a set of practical packages:

Cyclic irrigation: alternate one irrigation with saline groundwater and one with fresh water (canal or rain) so the root zone salinity oscillates but does not build up. Reduces cumulative salt load in the profile compared with continuous saline irrigation.
Blending: mix saline groundwater with a proportion of fresh water in a farm reservoir or by dual delivery to reduce applied-water EC below the critical crop-tolerance threshold.
Cultivar substitution: replace highly salt-sensitive crops (pulses, most vegetables, rice on light soils) with tolerant alternatives — barley, mustard, cotton, wheat (KRL varieties), pomegranate, ber, Salvadora, and select halophytes.
Drainage and leaching fraction: a design leaching fraction (5–15% of applied water in excess of ET) is built into the irrigation schedule to flush salts downward, with adequate natural or engineered drainage to remove the flushed salts.

Halophyte and Salicornia agriculture on coastal saline wasteland

India has approximately 1.7 million hectares of coastal saline soils across the nine coastal states and the coastal Union Territories, much of it under mangrove fringe, tidal flats and abandoned salt pans. Conventional crops are almost impossible on this land, but halophytes— plants physiologically adapted to high salt — thrive. CSSRI's halophyte research, concentrated at RRS Bharuch and RRS Anand for the Gujarat coast (and with collaborations for Sundarbans and Andhra coast), evaluates:

Salicornia brachiata: a succulent annual halophyte producing edible tender shoots (marketed as sea asparagus / samphire) and oilseed-quality seed with a fatty-acid profile suitable for cosmetic and food-industry use. Can be irrigated with seawater or highly brackish groundwater.
Suaeda maritima / Suaeda nudiflora: leafy halophytes of the coastal marsh, valuable for green fodder and biomass on saline flats.
Atriplex species: halophyte fodder shrubs of arid saline flats, providing browse for sheep and goats.
Salvadora persica: a halophyte tree yielding pilu oilseed and tolerating extremely saline groundwater — an important agroforestry species for coastal and inland saline wasteland.

AICRP-SAS&USW — the all-India coordinating role

CSSRI coordinates the All India Coordinated Research Project on Management of Salt-Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture (AICRP-SAS&USW), one of ICAR's multi-location coordinated research projects. AICRP-SAS&USW brings together state agricultural universities and ICAR institute centres across states with material salt-affected areas — Haryana, Punjab, UP, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and West Bengal — to run standardised long-term experiments on reclamation, saline-water irrigation, halophyte agronomy and salt-tolerant variety multi-location testing. The AICRP data feed the multi-state adoption of CSSRI packages and the notification of new CSR / KRL varieties.

Connections to Central schemes and cooperating institutes

Soil Health Card: CSSRI methods and thresholds for saline-sodic classification (ECe, ESP, SAR) are embedded in the SHC laboratory analytical protocols; CSSRI has trained state soil-testing lab staff.
PMKSY and Per Drop More Crop: CSSRI drainage prescriptions are referenced when sanctioning waterlogged-command reclamation projects; micro-irrigation (drip / sprinkler) is a recommended tool on saline lands to reduce water application and thus salt loading.
NMSA: salt-affected soils are covered under the soil-health and rainfed-area sub-missions, using CSSRI packages.
RKVY: the Rainfed Area Development window has funded state-level reclamation projects; the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project (UP Bhumi Sudhar Nigam, World Bank-financed) is the largest single field application of CSSRI technology.
PMFBY: crop insurance on reclaimed sodic and saline land protects farmer investment during the vulnerable early years of reclamation when salt-stress residual damage can still cause yield failure.
IARI and IIWBR: partner ICAR institutes for salt-tolerant rice, wheat, mustard and fodder-legume breeding.
NDRI and NDDB: integrated crop-dairy systems for reclaimed saline land — the fodder / forage component of CSSRI reclamation feeds directly into buffalo / cattle systems where CSSRI-Karnal, NDRI-Karnal and NDDB-Anand operate on the same farmer base.
CAZRI: arid-zone saline groundwater (Rajasthan, Kutch) is the crossover research territory where CSSRI saline-water packages and CAZRI arid-zone agronomy meet.

NDRI

ICAR-National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal — the sister central institute on the same Karnal ICAR cluster; integrated crop-dairy systems on reclaimed saline land connect CSSRI and NDRI research.

IIWBR

ICAR-Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research, Karnal — jointly develops the KRL series of salt-tolerant rabi wheats with CSSRI for the reclaimed sodic / saline belt.

Soil Health Card

Central soil-testing scheme; CSSRI thresholds for ECe, ESP and SAR classify saline / sodic soils and shape the recommendation module.

PMKSY

Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana — the umbrella irrigation scheme under which CSSRI drainage and micro-irrigation packages are deployed on waterlogged saline lands.

Per Drop More Crop

PMKSY-PDMC micro-irrigation sub-mission; drip and sprinkler systems are a critical tool for controlling salt loading on marginally saline soils.

NMSA

National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture — salt-affected soils are covered under NMSA's soil-health and rainfed-area sub-missions, drawing on CSSRI packages.

RKVY

Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana — the Rainfed Area Development window has funded state-level sodic / saline land reclamation using CSSRI technology.

IARI

ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi — the flagship ICAR crop-sciences Deemed University; partner on salt-tolerant crop breeding.

CAZRI

ICAR-Central Arid Zone Research Institute, Jodhpur — arid-zone saline groundwater is the crossover research territory where CSSRI saline-water packages meet CAZRI arid-zone agronomy.

NBPGR

ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources — germplasm exchange for salt-tolerant landraces and halophyte accessions used in CSSRI's breeding programme.

PMFBY

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana — crop insurance for reclaimed sodic / saline land protects farmer investment through the vulnerable early years of reclamation.

Universities & Research Institutes

Full directory of Indian SAUs, ICAR institutes, and agricultural universities.

References

cssri.res.in — CSSRI official portal: divisions, regional research stations at Canning, Bharuch, Anand and Lucknow, salt-affected soils of India atlas, CSR / KRL variety notifications, technology bulletins on sub-surface drainage and gypsum reclamation, AICRP-SAS&USW project outputs and annual reports.
icar.org.in — Indian Council of Agricultural Research — parent institution of CSSRI.
agricoop.nic.in — Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare — CSSRI falls under DARE / MoAFW.
soilhealth.dac.gov.in — Soil Health Card scheme portal — uses CSSRI thresholds and methods for saline / sodic soil classification.
Press Information Bureau (PIB) — releases on the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project, CSR / KRL variety notifications, and Central-scheme reclamation windows.

Frequently asked questions

What is CSSRI and when was it founded?: CSSRI — the ICAR–Central Soil Salinity Research Institute — is India's dedicated national research institute for the reclamation and productive use of salt-affected lands and saline groundwaters. It is headquartered at Kachhwa Road, Karnal 132001, Haryana, on the same Karnal ICAR cluster that hosts NDRI, IIWBR and NBAGR. CSSRI was established in 1969 under the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in direct response to the rapid emergence of secondary salinity and waterlogging in the newly created canal command areas of north-west India — where Green-Revolution irrigation expansion in Punjab, Haryana, western UP and Rajasthan was raising water tables and pushing salts to the root zone. CSSRI reports to ICAR under the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), Ministry of Agriculture & Farmers Welfare (MoAFW).
Where is CSSRI located and what are its regional research stations?: CSSRI's main campus is at Kachhwa Road, Karnal 132001, Haryana, with an attached experimental farm at Nain and long-term saline / sodic experimental plots. Because the geography and chemistry of salt-affected soils vary dramatically across India, CSSRI runs regional research stations at four contrasting sites: (1) Canning Town, South 24 Parganas, West Bengal — coastal saline soils of the Sundarbans delta, waterlogged and periodically inundated by tidal surges; (2) Bharuch, Gujarat — coastal saline soils of the Narmada–Tapi estuarine zone; (3) Anand, Gujarat — salt-affected coastal and inland pockets in central Gujarat, in collaboration with Anand Agricultural University; and (4) Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh — alkali / sodic soils (usar / bhur / kallar lands) of the Indo-Gangetic plain. This four-station network lets CSSRI cover inland saline, inland sodic, coastal saline and estuarine saline conditions in parallel.
How big is India's salt-affected area, and how is it distributed?: CSSRI's national assessments — consolidated in its Salt-Affected Soils of India atlas and updated periodically with NBSS&LUP and state remote-sensing centres — estimate that roughly 6.73 million hectares of India's cultivable land are salt-affected. Of this, approximately 2.9 million ha are classified as saline (dominant chloride and sulphate salts, common in coastal Gujarat, Sundarbans West Bengal, coastal Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and parts of arid Rajasthan) and about 3.8 million ha as sodic / alkali (dominant sodium carbonate–bicarbonate, high exchangeable sodium percentage, common in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana and parts of Bihar and Madhya Pradesh). Coastal saline soils affect ~1.7 million ha across nine coastal states and the two coastal Union Territories. Salt-affected wastelands together represent one of India's largest single reservoirs of low-productivity land available for reclamation and productivity gains.
What is sub-surface drainage and how did CSSRI develop it for Haryana and Rajasthan?: Sub-surface drainage (SSD) — also called horizontal sub-surface drainage — is CSSRI's flagship engineering technology for reclaiming waterlogged saline soils in canal command areas. Perforated PVC or corrugated pipe drains are laid at a design depth of about 1.5–2 m below the surface, at a lateral spacing of 25–75 m depending on soil hydraulic conductivity, and connected to a collector drain that discharges saline drainage water to an outlet. The system lowers the water table below the root zone and flushes accumulated salts out of the profile with each irrigation cycle. CSSRI, working with the Haryana State Government, ICID and the Netherlands / Dutch cooperation programme in the 1980s and 1990s, standardised SSD design and implementation in the waterlogged saline pockets of Rohtak, Jhajjar, Sonipat, Sirsa and Hisar districts of Haryana, and in the Indira Gandhi Nahar Pariyojana (IGNP) command in Rajasthan. Reclaimed SSD land in Haryana has typically moved from zero or very low productivity back to wheat and rice yields close to the district average within 2–3 seasons.
How does CSSRI reclaim sodic / alkali (usar) soils, and what is the role of gypsum?: Sodic reclamation is a chemistry problem, not a drainage problem: sodic soils have low salinity but very high exchangeable sodium, which destroys soil structure, causes surface crusting, and blocks water infiltration. CSSRI's standardised reclamation package for sodic (usar) soils centres on gypsum (calcium sulphate, CaSO₄·2H₂O) application — usually 25–50% of the soil's gypsum requirement, applied as fine (<2 mm) mineral gypsum or phosphogypsum, incorporated into the surface 10–15 cm and then leached in with adequate irrigation. The calcium replaces sodium on the exchange complex; the displaced sodium leaches downward. Reclamation is completed by Sesbania (dhaincha) green manuring for organic matter, cultivation of a salt-tolerant rice variety in the first kharif (typically CSR-10, CSR-27, CSR-30 or CSR-36), and follow-up with a salt-tolerant wheat (KRL series) in rabi. This gypsum-Sesbania-rice-wheat package, developed and validated at CSSRI Karnal and the CSSRI Lucknow station on the massive UP sodic belt, is the technical basis for the sodic-land reclamation projects executed under the Ministry of Agriculture and multiple state land-development corporations, and for the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project financed by the World Bank across successive phases.
What are the CSR rice, KRL wheat and CS mustard varieties?: CSSRI's plant-breeding programme has released a nationally used series of salt-tolerant crop varieties, each notified after multi-location trials on sodic and saline soils. The CSR rice series — CSR-10, CSR-13, CSR-23, CSR-27, CSR-30 (a salt-tolerant Basmati), CSR-36, CSR-43, CSR-46 and CSR-56 among others — are non-Basmati and Basmati rices bred for tolerance to sodicity, salinity or both, suitable for kharif planting on freshly reclaimed sodic land or saline coastal land. The KRL wheat series — including KRL-1-4, KRL-19, KRL-210 and KRL-283 — provides salt-tolerant rabi wheat for the same reclaimed lands, developed jointly by CSSRI Karnal with IIWBR. CSSRI has also contributed salt-tolerant mustard (CS series) and forage / fodder lines. These varieties are the biological pillar without which the engineering (SSD) and chemical (gypsum) pillars of reclamation would produce reclaimed land with no cultivar options for the first years of cropping.
What is CSSRI's saline-water and cyclic-irrigation research?: In large parts of arid and semi-arid India — especially western Rajasthan, western Haryana, southern Punjab and parts of Gujarat — irrigation groundwater is itself saline (EC often 4–15 dS/m). CSSRI's saline-water agriculture research addresses how such water can still be used productively without permanently damaging the soil. Key packages include: (1) cyclic irrigation — alternating a saline groundwater irrigation with a fresh (canal) irrigation to keep root-zone salinity within crop tolerance; (2) blending — mixing saline groundwater with canal water in tanks or fields to reduce the EC of the applied water; (3) crop and cultivar choice — selecting salt-tolerant CSR / KRL varieties or salt-tolerant crops (barley, mustard, cotton, Salvadora, Suaeda) in place of highly sensitive crops (pulses, rice on light soils); and (4) mandatory drainage or leaching fraction in the design. These packages, tested at CSSRI's Bikaner-cluster experimental sites and Bharuch station, are embedded in the AICRP on Management of Salt-Affected Soils and Use of Saline Water in Agriculture, an all-India coordinated project that CSSRI runs.
What are halophytes and Salicornia, and what is CSSRI's role in halophyte agriculture?: Halophytes are plant species that are physiologically adapted to grow in high-salinity environments — coastal marshes, saline inland flats, mangrove fringes — where conventional (glycophyte) crops cannot survive. CSSRI's halophyte research programme, particularly at its Bharuch and Anand stations for the Gujarat coast, evaluates species such as Salicornia brachiata (a succulent halophyte producing edible tender shoots and oilseed-quality seed), Suaeda maritima and Suaeda nudiflora (leafy halophytes), Atriplex species (halophyte fodder shrubs), Salvadora persica (a halophyte oilseed tree yielding pilu seed oil), and mangrove associates. Salicornia in particular has emerged as an economically interesting crop for coastal saline wasteland — its seed oil has fatty-acid profile similar to safflower and can be exported for cosmetic or food-industry use, and the crop can be irrigated with seawater or brackish groundwater on land that would otherwise be unusable. CSSRI's halophyte germplasm and agronomy is a strategic reserve for climate-resilient use of India's coastal saline belts.
How does CSSRI connect to Soil Health Cards, PMKSY, NMSA and RKVY?: CSSRI's outputs are woven into several Central schemes. (1) The Soil Health Card scheme uses CSSRI-derived thresholds for classifying soil salinity (ECe) and sodicity (ESP, SAR) and CSSRI-standardised laboratory methods, and CSSRI has trained state soil-testing lab staff on saline/sodic analytics. (2) PMKSY — Pradhan Mantri Krishi Sinchayee Yojana, particularly the Har Khet Ko Pani and Watershed Development components — draws on CSSRI's drainage and reclamation prescriptions when sanctioning projects in canal-command waterlogged pockets and in coastal saline tracts. (3) NMSA — the National Mission for Sustainable Agriculture under the NAPCC — includes salt-affected soils under its soil-health and rainfed-area sub-missions, and CSSRI provides the technical package. (4) RKVY's Rainfed Area Development window has funded state-level reclamation of sodic and saline lands based on CSSRI technology packages, and the UP Sodic Lands Reclamation Project (executed by UP Bhumi Sudhar Nigam) is the largest single field application of the CSSRI gypsum-Sesbania-CSR-KRL package.

The 1969 founding, the Karnal HQ location, the four regional stations at Canning, Bharuch, Anand and Lucknow, the sub-surface drainage package standardised through the Indo-Dutch cooperation in Haryana, the gypsum-Sesbania-CSR-KRL sodic reclamation package, the CSR rice and KRL wheat variety series, the halophyte research programme and the AICRP-SAS&USW coordinating role above draw on publicly available material on cssri.res.in, icar.org.in and PIB releases. Divisional structure, ongoing projects and variety notifications are periodically revised — confirm current details on cssri.res.in before planning research visits, collaborations or field-scale reclamation programmes.