Halophytes and salt-tolerant plants as potential forage for ruminants in the Near East region

This review paper updates knowledge on the fodder potential of a wide range of halophytes and salt-tolerant forages. These plants can produce relatively high consumable biomass in saline areas where non-halophytic species cannot grow or have low dry matter yields. Therefore, halophytes and some other salt-tolerant plants can provide a drought reserve or a supplementary feed source under arid and semi-arid conditions. On grazing lands, the halophytes can serve as a complementary nutrients source to other conventional feedstuffs, such as Atriplex spp. and cereal straws or hays. In addition to biomass production, wide variations in palatability, chemical composition, nutritive value and animal responses to several halophytes and salt-tolerant forages have been reported in the literature. Some of these species could be valuable sources of minerals and or nitrogen. However, the provision of energy supplements (e.g. barley) is necessary to overcome maintenance and or moderate production requirements of sheep and goats fed on halophytes and or salt-tolerant forages-based diets. Many studies showed that these plants could be used advantageously as alternative feeds to replace totally or partially common feedstuffs, thus to alleviate feeding cost. However, the presence of high contents of ash, plant secondary metabolites and non-protein nitrogen (NPN) should be taken into consideration when formulating diets containing halophytes and or salt-tolerant forages for small ruminants. Although most of feeding studies reported in this review have been carried in the Near East region, mainly in Egypt, results obtained in other regions worldwide support that feeding salt-tolerant plants and halophytes could promote livestock production systems, increase farmers’ incomes and improve environmental conditions in the saline areas.