Besides Peganum harmala, you can test Calotropis, procera, Capparis spinosa, Citrullus colocynthis, Euphorbia caducifolia, Glinus lotoides, Halopyrum mucronatum, Pergularia tomentosa, Rhanterium epapposum, Tribulus bimucronatus, Tribulus macropterus and Tribulus terrestris.

Dear Arvind Singh

Can you kindly describe the overall criteria that you use in your suggestions?

Hello Thaer; In the first suggestion above, members of the genus Tribulus were listed. They quickly become noxious weeds! Their seeds have large, sharp spines that injure animals' feet, puncture the tires of bicycles and render patchy areas impassable. At least that is the case in the southwestern USA. Best regards, Jim Des Lauriers

Many thanks James Des Lauriers

Are the features you were mentioned good or bad for our purposes?

Regards

Thaer; I would think that they are not suitable. Probably annual, noxious weeds wouldn't provide useful amounts of ground cover. In California, USA they produce small patches (perhaps 2-3 m diameter) scattered in places that get some water. In irrigated places they form solid mats that die out in the end of summer. During the windy season they are absent. Jim Des Lauriers

Kindly check this paper

https://completelandscaping.com/best-types-grass-desert-climates/

Thanks Dear Kiprotich Kiptum for your suggestion

Hi Dr Thaer Roomi . I agree with

Dr Arvind Singh . He has one of the best suggestions.

Thanks Dr Aref Wazwaz

You are most welcome dear

Dr Thaer Roomi .

If you could make a link to a checklist of the native flora of your area where you are going to plant, that would be very useful, so we could provide direct answers to your question.

In my planting area in northern California near San Francisco, there are 1,800 native plants within a 80 kilometer radius, but only 20 of those which would be useful for replanting, as colonizing vegetation in a barren soil situation. That means, what are the important reasons that would limit or preclude the use of the other 1,780 native plants? Only 1% of the native flora of my area, is useful for sowing in bare soil situations.

FIRST item, NATIVE COLONIZER-- is the plant a colonizer, or does it appear once other native plants stabilize the soil first. You always need to start with the colonizers, to get that first primer-layer to stabilize and cover the barren soil areas.

SECOND, LOCAL ECOTYPE SEED--is there genetic ecotype material to harvest locally, so you have the proper native material to start with in your test plots?

THIRD item, BULK SEED PRODUCTION COSTS. When you go to do seed production of your native, the seeds must be produced abundantly and very easy to harvest. And the puncture vine does not fall in that category.

Another example that would preclude use, the plant called Willow weed (Epilobium) that is an excellent colonizer after fires here in the West, but the seeds are impossible to collect and very small and fly away when ripe, so would cost about $2,000 per kilo to produce in quantity.

Ideally, you need plants that produce abundant seeds and are easy to harvest, so your bulk price, to be able to use on large scale projects is ideally below $10 per kilo. When you go out to harvest your local stock seed, keep track of the time and quantities involved, to get a ultimate cost, when you bulk it out in the future.

I have experience in hand-harvesting the Peganum, so know that plant is very easy and inexpensive to produce.

FOURTH item, if the area has grazing animals, make the plants ones that they will not eat readily--why plant cow-ice cream, if grazing animals could take it all away in an instant. That is why I was suggesting Peganum harmala, nothing will eat it, it colonizes bare soil easily, plants spread horizontally to keep soil in place, when seeds are ripe the dried seed capsules are above the plant, and seeds are produced in quantities, and easily cleaned for future sowing, and the cost of production would be $5-10 per kilo. or less.

FIFTH item--once you find and test your native plant colonizer-candidates, who can plant those seeds on a seed farm, and produce bulk quantities, so you could sow them over larger areas. This is where the USA desert revegetation projects get stuck. There are 400 researchers in the USA, spending $70 million a year for the last 20 years, and are still not out of the test plot stage, into the bulk seed production, because they have never had their test plots to work consistently first.

In the arid West David Pilliod in 2017 at Article Seventy-Five Years of Vegetation Treatments on Public Rangel...

By making a checklist of your local flora, that would be very useful to have more detailed discussions and suggestions for your question here Then, we could all gather around your flora-table and suggest the best potentials for your project, and give reasons for each species that is recommended.

For desert colonizers, think annual native grasses, sunflower family, legume family, cucumber family, Plantago ovata and Peganum harmala first, those are the ones that start to quickly knit the bare soil back together.

For the legumes, you will need to harvest some of the top soil from around existing plants, so that when you sow the legume seeds, you mix some of that soil with the seeds, to have the proper nitrogen-fixing bacteria back into the barren soil --especially important in areas where legumes have not been growing for a long time.

Since you are located in the Fertile Crescent, you can do two things are the same time. Stabilize soil and conservation of the wild ancestors of cultivated plants of your region. The article at https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10722-017-0576-3.pdf list that nine major crops were domesticated in this region including einkorn, emmer, barley, lentil, pea, chick- pea, bitter vetch, broad bean, flax. All of those would make excellent additions to your test plots.

Another issue that I didn't notice in the remarks above is whether you will be able to exclude grazing livestock. That is likely to be an important consideration. Regards, Jim Des Lauriers

Thanks Dear Craig Carlton Dremann

I have record all your answers and messages in a separated pdf file. I think we have a good start to go through our project.

Regards

Dear James Des Lauriers

Thanks a lot.

Mr. Craig Carlton Dremann sent me some details via messages containing the same note about grazing livestock. He suggested some types that are not preferred by animals.

• Obviously, the planting of 50 billion trees under the "Middle East Green Initiative" that got started at the COP 27 meeting in November 2022 will have some impact on Climate Change and help fix dust storm issues.
• ANY of the 7 READERS of this QUESTION.. Is your country a member of the "Middle East Green Initiative" who will be planting those 50 billion trees to combat desertification and help eliminate dust storms?
• If you could post answers to these questions below, it would be useful to see what each country's goals are...
• If so, what is your country's tree planting goal?
• If your country is not yet part of that Initiative, any interest from your country to join, or form your own?
• What will be the annual budget for this Ecological Restoration work?
• Which agency within your government will be responsible for the plantings?
• Will the native grasses and wildflowers be planted along with the trees, to secure the soil around the trees to keep dust from blowing?
• Will all of the trees be native to your country and no exotics planted?
• Last year, SAUDI ARABIA's goal was ONE MILLION trees planted PER WEEK, until 10 billion are planted.
• IRAN's goal is 4.5 MILLION trees per week for the next four years.
• 24 countries at the COP27 meeting in November 2022, agreed to plant a total of 50 BILLION trees all together. YouTube video available of the meeting of the "Saudi Green Initiative" that was expanded to the "Middle East" group of the 24 counties.
• Any oil or gas producing country, going to use the carbon credits produced by those trees, to be able to sell Carbon Neutral fossil fuels to your customers, like Occidental Petroleum did when 2 million barrels of Carbon Neutral oil was sold to India 2 years ago?
• Or use the carbon offsets produced by those trees, to make your own country’s fossil fuel use, become Carbon Neutral?