Saline Soil Reclamation Index as an efficient tool for assessing restoration progress of saline land

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>Restoration of degraded land is imperative for addressing climate change, deriving additional benefits such as biomass and biofuel for supporting a biobased economy and also for meeting various targets of the Bonn Challenge and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN‐SDGs). In this context, the present research aimed to evaluate the performance of mixed biomass plantations on the saline land of western India over a period of 4 years. The impact of plantations on soil quality over the study period (2015–2018) was analysed by the Saline Soil Reclamation Index (SSRI), developed through principal component analysis. The study found a strong correlation between plant growth attributes and soil quality (<jats:italic>p</jats:italic> < .01). Soil porosity, texture, pH balance, electrical conductivity (EC), available potassium (AK) and available nitrogen (AN) levels are found to be the key indicators regulating the plant growth. The EC, AK and AN levels were seen to change significantly during the initial stage (2014) from 25 dS m<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>, 10 mg kg<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>and 23 mg kg<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>to 1 dS m<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>, 24 mg kg<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>and 39 mg kg<jats:sup>−1</jats:sup>, respectively, towards the end of the study period (2018). Among the various test plants, six species (<jats:italic>Albizia lebbeck, Casuarina equisetifolia, Cordia dichotoma, Pithecellobium dulce, Pongamia pinnata, Terminalia arjuna</jats:italic>) were found with high SSRI (>0.50); while the rest displayed moderate SSRI (0.30–0.49), except for<jats:italic>Azadirachta indica</jats:italic>, which shown low SSRI (<0.30). The trees having high SSRI are most suitable for the reclamation of saline soil and therefore, SSRI can be used as a tool for assessing the progress of saline land restoration.</jats:p>