Draining water from a basin into a canal. - - Desalinization and Lowering of Water Table on Monymusk Sugar Estate. The land used for growing sugar cane is irrigated by a 100-year-old aqueduct that carries water down from the neighbouring hills. This water is naturally saline and over the years has left the land with a high degree of salinity. In addition, the high water table, about one foot below the surface, is bad for sugar cane which has roots two-feet-deep. As an experiment, two experts from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) stationed at the Sugar Industry Research Institute in Mandeville created a number of plots ("basins") by digging canals up to one metre deep and banking up the earth between them. Under the basins they have buried a porous pipe that drains away the underground water to deeper canals which then carry it to a nearby marsh by the sea. Some of the basins are flooded, using the water from the hills. The salinity of the water coming out of the pipes is tested daily; if it is more saline than the water from the hills, it indicates that the water is leeching out the salt; if it is the same as the hill water, then the salt has already been leeched out of the soil. The other basins are left dry to see if rain water is as effective in cleaning out the salt. The drainage rate is checked daily, and water samples are bottled to send to the Institute for analysis.