VOA慢速英语: 荷兰人试验在海水中种植蔬菜

荷兰人在盐水里试验种植蔬菜

Climate change has caused a rise in sea levels. This has increased the amount of salt in fresh water used on coastal farms. As a result farmers are increasingly unable to use fields close to the sea.

气候变化导致海平面上升。同时增加了靠海农场使用的淡水的含盐量。结果农户就日渐没办法使用太靠近大海的田地。

Scientists call this process “salinization.” The term comes from the word “saline” -- which means a mixture of salt and water. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says salinization is reducing the world’s irrigated lands by 1 to 2 percent every year. Irrigation is the process of supplying land with freshwater from other areas.

科学家称这样的过程叫做“盐碱化（salinization）”，这个词来源于“含盐的（“saline”）”——水和盐的混合物。联合国粮食农业组织称盐碱化使可灌溉的土地面积每年减少1%-2%。灌溉就是从其它的地方引入淡水浇灌田地。

But a farmer in the Netherlands is now using a mixture of sea and fresh water to grow healthy and tasty vegetables. Marc Van Rijsselberghe started with an experiment. He put several kinds of plants in saline.

但是荷兰的一农户现在运用海水和淡水的混合物来种植健康、美味的蔬菜。马克·凡·瑞赛尔伯格开始一项实验，他把几种作物放在含盐的地里耕种。

“We put in a lot of plants in the fields and then we put in, put them in fresh water and in sea water and all the varieties between it, and then we see which variety is surviving and which variety is dying.”

“我们在农田里种了很多作物，我们把这些作物放在淡水、海水中以及淡水和海水的混合水中，然后看看哪种作物能够存活，哪些日趋枯萎、死亡。”

Mr. Van Rijsselberghe worked on the project with scientists from the Free University of Amsterdam. He divided a farm into eight irrigated areas. Separate pipes pumped fresh and sea water, and a computer program created water with eight levels of salinity.

凡·瑞赛尔伯格跟来自阿姆斯特丹自由大学的科学家一起进行这个项目的研究。他把农场分成八个灌溉区，分别用管子往各区输送淡水和海水，电脑程序控制着八区各自的含盐标准。

“And then computer says ‘go’ and then it goes to the fields and dripping irrigation starts to work and we are going to kill plants. That’s it.”

“电脑上显示‘可以’然后开始滴灌，然后我们把一些作物弄出来拔掉，仅此而已。”

Computerized measuring devices called “sensors” controlled the water levels and the levels of salinity. Mr.Van Rijsselberghe says he was able to harvest vegetables from most of the eight test areas. He says the vegetables were smaller than those grown in fresh water. But he says they also have more sugar and salt, so they taste better.

被称作“传感器”的电脑控制设备控制着水流量和含盐水平。凡·瑞赛尔伯格说他将从这八块试验田里收获蔬菜。这些盐水中生长的蔬菜比淡水中生长的蔬菜个头要小，但是它们含糖量和含盐量更多，吃起来更美味。

“It’s a miracle. I mean, it shouldn’t be a carrot, it should be dying if we look at the datas that are available in the world at the moment.”

“这是个奇迹，就目前世界范围内的数据资料来看，萝卜应该存活不了。但是它确实长势很不错。”

The farmer grew carrots, cabbage, onions and beetroot. But he found that potatoes grew better than the other vegetables in the combination of sea and fresh water. Mr. Van Rijsselberghe says four kinds of these potatoes were recently sent to Pakistan, where thousands of hectares of land have been damaged by salinization. Farmers in Pakistan will test the Dutch potatoes to see if they can be grown in those fields.

农户种了萝卜、洋白菜、甜菜根，但是他发现还海水和淡水的混合水中土豆长势情况比其它的蔬菜都好。凡·瑞赛尔伯格说这四种土豆品种最近被送往巴基斯坦，在那里，成千上万公顷的田地被盐碱化。巴基斯坦的农民将试验一下荷兰的土豆是否能够在他们的盐碱地上种植。

I’m Caty Weaver.

我是凯蒂·威弗尔。

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Words in This Story

coastal – adj. referring to the land along or near a sea or ocean

mixture – n. something made by combining two or more ingredients

variety – n. a number or collection of different things or people

pipe – n. a long, hollow tube for carrying water, steam or gas

taste – n. the sweet, sour, bitter, or salty quality of a thing that you can sense when it is in your mouth; the flavor that you can taste when you eat or drink something