Mulberry-based bio-reclamation of salinity-degraded landscapes.

Authors

Ritwik Acharya, S Rehan Ahmad, Debnirmalya Gangopadhyay, Shubhajit Shaw, Ankita Manna, Sreya Das, Soumi Chakraborty, Debasmita Sen, Rahul Chatterjee

Published in

iScience. Volume 29. Issue 7. Pages 116566. Jul 17, 2026. Epub Jun 30, 2026.

Abstract

Soil salinization affects more than 1 billion hectares globally and 6.74 million hectares in India, causing substantial productivity losses and degradation of soil ecological function. This review synthesizes evidence from the literature (1977-2025) to evaluate mulberry (Morus spp.) as a nature-based solution (NbS) for bio-reclamation of salinity-degraded landscapes within agroforestry restoration systems. Genotype-level analyses indicate mulberry tolerance to soil electrical conductivity (EC) up to 23 dS m^-1, with operational EC thresholds of 4-8, 8-15, and 15-23 dS m^-1. Mulberry enhances ion regulation, antioxidant defense and progressive soil structural recovery while supporting sericulture-linked livelihoods. An artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled decision-support system achieved strong predictive performance (coefficient of determination [R²] = 0.857; root-mean-square error [RMSE] = 0.769), illustrating how integration of ecological mechanisms and data-driven modeling can enable scalable, climate-resilient land restoration planning.

PMID:
42491633
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 24 Jul 2026.

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