On Farm Camelina Performance on Salt-Affected Mediterranean Coastal Soils: Evidence from Northeastern Italy

Salinity is an emerging constraint for Mediterranean coastal agriculture, where shallow groundwater, seawater intrusion, and summer evapo-concentration generate relevant intra-seasonal variability in soil electrical conductivity. Camelina [Camelina sativa (L.) Crantz] has been proposed as a diversification oilseed for constrained environments, but its field performance under realistic, dynamic salinity in Mediterranean soils remains unexplored. This two season on farm study compared three commercial camelina lines at an inland non-saline site and a coastal saline–sodic site in northeastern Italy, combining agronomic measurements with phenology aligned monitoring of soil saturated paste electrical conductivity (ECe). At the saline site, ECe increased from 1.8 dS m−1 at the vegetative stage to 6.2 dS m−1 at seed filling, while camelina completed its cycle earlier than at the inland site. Despite similar aboveground and root biomass yield at flowering across lines, performance diverged during the reproductive phase. Two lines maintained similar seed yields (1.30 Mg ha−1) at the coastal site compared with the inland site, whereas one line declined from 1.45 Mg ha−1 to 0.40 Mg ha−1. Differences among lines in seed yield under salinity were accompanied by contrasting responses in seed oil composition. Oil yield at the saline site was more strongly associated with the increase in ECe from flowering to seed filling than with absolute ECe at seed filling. These results provide the first field-based evidence of line-specific salinity responses in camelina and highlight its potential to diversify moderately salt-affected Mediterranean coastal cropping systems, while emphasizing the need to account for temporal salinity dynamics in genotype selection and crop planning.