Abstract

The use of salt as an appetizing food additive could be evidenced from the historic records of ancient civilizations as old as 5,000 years. The salt manufacturing from the inland saline environment is having the similar records. There are many such salt lakes on the earth with the saline environment supporting a great diversity of the life such as the Dead Sea, the Great Salt Lake of Utah, the Kulundinskaya Steppe lakes of former USSR, the Wadi Natrun lakes of Egypt, the East Africa Rift Valley lakes, the Great Plains lakes of Canada, Australia salt lakes, Exportadora de Sal of South Africa, Western salt pond systems of California, etc. India is endowed with a large sea coast but most of its inland saline environments are situated in Rajasthan. The Sāmbhar is the largest shallow saline lake of India and considered to be the most significant in terms of ecology and economy.