YIELD AND FORAGE QUALITY OF SALTBUSH IRRIGATED WITH REJECT BRINE FROM DESALINATION PLANT BY REVERSE OSMOSIS

ABSTRACT: Rural communities located in the Brazilian Northeast, especially in the semiarid zone, live with water shortages resulting from erratic rainfall. This work proposes the cultivation of saltbush (Atriplex nummularia) in the Rural Settlement Project of Boa Fé, Mossoró/RN as alternative to the disposal of reject brine from desalination plant on yield of forage. The statistical design was a split-plot design, being four treatments at the plots, related to irrigation with reject brine water, at different levels of soil moisture by moisture from Field Capacity (FC) (100, 85, 70 and 50% of FC) and in subplots and two levels of organic manure (without fertilized and fertilized) with four replications. The variables of yield and forage quality of saltbush were analyzed. It was observed that saltbush has a great production capacity in terms of fresh matter and drought for saltbush under a level of 85% soil moisture in relation to the field capacity of soil, presenting minimal loss of yield; however, this proved to be productive even with the dry soil. The total yield was satisfactory, showing its viability for forage production.