VOA慢速英語(yǔ): 荷蘭人試驗(yàn)在海水中種植蔬菜

荷蘭人在鹽水里試驗(yàn)種植蔬菜

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.

氣候變化導(dǎo)致海平面上升。同時(shí)增加了靠海農(nóng)場(chǎng)使用的淡水的含鹽量。結(jié)果農(nóng)戶就日漸沒辦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.

科學(xué)家稱這樣的過程叫做“鹽堿化（salinization）”，這個(gè)詞來源于“含鹽的（“saline”）”——水和鹽的混合物。聯(lián)合國(guó)糧食農(nóng)業(yè)組織稱鹽堿化使可灌溉的土地面積每年減少1%-2%。灌溉就是從其它的地方引入淡水澆灌田地。

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.

但是荷蘭的一農(nóng)戶現(xiàn)在運(yùn)用海水和淡水的混合物來種植健康、美味的蔬菜。馬克·凡·瑞賽爾伯格開始一項(xiàng)實(shí)驗(yàn)，他把幾種作物放在含鹽的地里耕種。

“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.”

“我們?cè)谵r(nóng)田里種了很多作物，我們把這些作物放在淡水、海水中以及淡水和海水的混合水中，然后看看哪種作物能夠存活，哪些日趨枯萎、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·瑞賽爾伯格跟來自阿姆斯特丹自由大學(xué)的科學(xué)家一起進(jìn)行這個(gè)項(xiàng)目的研究。他把農(nóng)場(chǎng)分成八個(gè)灌溉區(qū)，分別用管子往各區(qū)輸送淡水和海水，電腦程序控制著八區(qū)各自的含鹽標(biāo)準(zhǔn)。

“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.”

“電腦上顯示‘可以’然后開始滴灌，然后我們把一些作物弄出來拔掉，僅此而已。”

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.

被稱作“傳感器”的電腦控制設(shè)備控制著水流量和含鹽水平。凡·瑞賽爾伯格說他將從這八塊試驗(yàn)田里收獲蔬菜。這些鹽水中生長(zhǎng)的蔬菜比淡水中生長(zhǎng)的蔬菜個(gè)頭要小，但是它們含糖量和含鹽量更多，吃起來更美味。

“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.”

“這是個(gè)奇跡，就目前世界范圍內(nèi)的數(shù)據(jù)資料來看，蘿卜應(yīng)該存活不了。但是它確實(shí)長(zhǎng)勢(shì)很不錯(cuò)。”

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.

農(nóng)戶種了蘿卜、洋白菜、甜菜根，但是他發(fā)現(xiàn)還海水和淡水的混合水中土豆長(zhǎng)勢(shì)情況比其它的蔬菜都好。凡·瑞賽爾伯格說這四種土豆品種最近被送往巴基斯坦，在那里，成千上萬(wàn)公頃的田地被鹽堿化。巴基斯坦的農(nóng)民將試驗(yàn)一下荷蘭的土豆是否能夠在他們的鹽堿地上種植。

I’m Caty Weaver.

我是凱蒂·威弗爾。

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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