The issue of soil salinity as a major cause of poor soil health and crop yield loss has been of growing concern as climate change contributes to its effects. The objective of this research was to study the impact of increasingly saline soils on the relationship between grafted watermelons and yellow nutsedge, one of the major weeds in watermelon plasticulture. The seedless watermelon cultivar Melody was grown in a field after being grafted onto the C. maxima hybrid Carnivor and the C. amarus cultivar Carolina Strongback in addition to both a self-grafted and ungrafted control. The field was divided into four rows, which were irrigated with 0, 10%, 20%, and 30% dilutions of sea water for the duration of the experiment. A weed count was performed after one month and three months of irrigation. This demonstrated that salt had a significant effect on the total weed count at high concentrations, however the weeds demonstrated a much greater resistance to salt treatment than the watermelons in this trial. Based on this data, it is possible that salt intrusion events can contribute to increased weed related yield loss in watermelon crops.
