Wastewater Reuse in Agriculture: Effects on Soil-Plant System Properties

The use of non-conventional water resources can help to mitigate water stress and can support the agricultural sector. Treated municipal wastewater is one of the most readily available alternative water resources and its use in ag-riculture has been adopted to reduce fresh water usage in several countries, under their respective water quality regulations. This chapter reviews the re-sults of past and current research on the reuse of treated wastewater (munici-pal and agro-industrial) for irrigation and the corresponding effects on soil and plant systems. Particular attention has been given to research efforts high-lighting the effects of chemical-physical wastewater characteristics (e.g., ni-trogen, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, and heavy metals) and the corre-sponding microbiological indicators (e.g., Escherichia coli and Salmonella) on irrigated crops and soils. The selection of irrigation methods is another topic discussed in this chapter. Drip and subsurface irrigation methods are considered the more suitable irrigation techniques to be used with treated wastewater; they minimise toxicity hazards for plants, reduce the contamina-tion of edible crop products, and mitigate human health risks by minimising direct contact between wastewater and plant