The 2 nd International Conf. on Water Resources & Arid Environment (2006) Modern methods for counteracting salinity stress: A review El-Zanaty A.A. Abou El-Nour and Mohamed M. El-Fouly Fertilization Tech. Dept., National Res. Centre, Egypt Abstract Salinity in soil or water resources is one of the major environmental stresses that limit plant growth and productivity. Almost 1/3 of the irrigated lands in the world is under salinity problem. Plant performance usually expressed as crop yield, plants biomass or crops quality, and may be adversely affected by salinity- induced nutritional disorders. These disorders may result from the effect of salinity on nutrient availability, competitive uptake, transport or partitioning within the plant. This paper reviews how to improve the nutritional status of the crop grown under salinity stress through traditional and new techniques. Keywords: salinity, NaCl, Nutrient managements, Halophytes, Foliar feeding Introduction Salt stress is one of the most serious limiting factors for crop growth and production in the arid regions. About 23% of the world’s cultivated lands is saline and 37% is sodic (Khan and Duke, 2001). Soils can be saline due to geo-historical processes or they can be man-made. The water and salt balance, just like in oceans and seas determine the formation of salty soils, where more salt comes in than goes out. Here, the incoming water from the land brings salts that remain because there is no outlet and the evaporation water does not contain salts. Soil salinity in agriculture soils refers to the presence of high concentration of soluble salts in the soil moisture of the root zone. These concentrations of soluble salts through their high osmotic pressures affect plant growth by restricting the uptake of water by the roots. Salinity can also affect plant growth because the high concentration of salts in the soil solution interferes with balanced absorption of essential nutritional ions by plants (Tester and Devenport, 2003). It is well established that higher plants can withstand high salinity by either salt exclusion or salt inclusion (sykes, 1992). Salt excluders possess the ability to exclude