Samenvatting

Climate change can be described as both a natural and an artificial process that affects all life on earth. One of its consequences is the rising of sea levels which can cause problems in coastal areas, such as increasing the pressure of saline groundwater. Due to this increased pressure, this saline seepage water can rise to the surface, causing salinisation of the soil in question. This has direct impacts in nature, but it affects agricultural land as well. Salinisation of the soil causes a loss of soil structure and soil fertility, and these soils are often dehydrated. In addition, plants find it more difficult to root on these soils and can suffer from osmotic and ionic stress. Until now, it was still unknown whether ploughing could be a method of reducing the negative effects of salinisation. In addition, breeding salt tolerant wheat crops is considered difficult because this involves a polygenetic trait for which not much phenotypic selection methods are available. Therefore, this research focuses on which vegetative growth differences are visible in saline soils and to what extent ploughing has an effect on this.