 Barley notes are the two most salt tolerant annual crops producers can successfully plant on saline sodic areas in North Dakota. They will establish their other annual crops like canola or soybeans will not do well. Also one of the worst things we could do to these saline sodic areas is to plant a crop that will not do well there. Planting crops on saline sodic areas that are not salt tolerant will not only result in loss of revenue but it will also make the salinity and sodicity issues worse. In some cases that may also lead to heavy veat pressure. Access water soluble salts compete with plant roots for water there as sodicity results in poor soil structure. Here at the Langdon REC we have a saline sodic gradient that runs from east. Their salt and sodicity levels are low compared to west. There there are very high levels of salinity and sodicity. In order to check at what salt and sodicity levels we could successfully plant barley and oat crops we have planted four barley and four oat varieties and three replications. Barley varieties are pinnacle, ACC snurgy, ND Genesis and tradition. Oat varieties include Rockford, CS Kempton, ND Hart and SARS. First replication represent low salt and sodicity levels. The soil saturated paced electrical conductivity here is 3.99 and 7.32 miliemos per centimeter for the 0 to 6 and 6 to 24 inch soil depths. Sodium absorption ratio is 7.12 and 15.05 for the same soil depths. We could see that all barley and oat varieties have germinated well here. Also when we were getting the seedbed ready this area was very mellow compared to the other two replications. The barley and oat varieties are quite salt tolerant compared to other animal crops. However generally once the soil EC levels in the top soil get to 8 or more miliemos per centimeter even these crops will not do well. That is what we can see in the second replication. The EC levels here are 7.8 and 10.39 whereas SAR levels are 18.13 and 20.92 for the 0, 6 and 6 to 24 inch soil depths. So you can see the impact of higher surface salt and sodicity levels on barley and oat germination which is quite poor compared to the first replication. Also here when we were trying to get the seedbed ready this area was difficult to tell and there were big clumps. That is exactly what sodicity does to the soils resulting in poor soil structure. Now if we move on to the very high salt and sodicity replication area there's no germination at all whether it's barley or oats. EC levels here are 10.5 and 9.86 with SAR levels of 27.3 and 32.87 for the 0, 6 and 6 to 24 inch depths. This research trials shows us few things so far. Number one it is very helpful to analyze the soil salinity and sodicity levels before planting on these kind of unproductive areas. Number second we could profitably plant and grow barley and oats on areas with low to maybe moderate levels of salinity and sodicity. However if the salt and sodicity levels become too high for even crops like barley and oats then the best option will be to plant a mix of perennial salt and tolerant grasses.