Halfa Grass

Halfa grass (Desmostachya bipinnata), known across the region as dabh, is a tough, deep-rhizomed perennial grass a grower keeps for the jobs nothing else will do: it binds shifting, salt-crusted, degraded soil and gives fodder and mulch off ground written off as wasteland.¹

Where it thrives

Dabh is a survivor of hard country. It spreads across the Punjab plains on saline and sodic patches, colonises the Sindh coast on sandy and salt-laden flats, and persists in the dry margins of the Balochistan highlands. Its native range runs from the Sahara through to Indo-China, all of it seasonally dry tropics, which tells you what it is built for.¹ It tolerates drought, salinity and poor fertility that finish off sown pasture grasses, and once its rhizomes are down it holds through long dry spells in full sun.

Role in the system

Dabh is a pioneer of the grass and ground stratum on the worst ground, the species that goes in first where soil is bare, saline or eroding. Its creeping rhizomes knit a dense mat that binds loose and scoured surfaces, slows wind and water, and begins the slow repair that lets a succession get started. As a dynamic accumulator it draws nutrients up from depth and lays them on the surface as leaf litter; cut tops are chop-and-drop mulch that shade and feed the soil while you establish hardier shrubs and trees around it. In a reclamation guild it functions as the soil-holding nurse layer on saline and degraded patches, occupying the early successional phase and providing rough fodder and steady biomass before secondary species can take over. Coppice-like, it regrows readily from the crown after cutting or grazing.

Growing it

It is established from rhizome divisions or clump splits set into prepared ground at the start of the rains, spaced so the mats close into continuous cover; seed is slow and unreliable, so vegetative pieces are the practical route. The decisions that matter: plant onto the contour on eroding ground so the mat catches soil and water; keep new divisions watered only until the rhizomes take, after which it needs little; and cut or graze on rotation to keep leaf young and to harvest mulch without exhausting the crown.

What you get

You get a soil binder and rough grazing on land that grows nothing else, plus mulch and thatch from the leaf, and a long history of medicinal use of the plant in traditional systems for urinary and digestive complaints.²³ The honest caveat: dabh is coarse, low in protein and only middling fodder once mature, and the same vigorous rhizomes that make it a reclamation tool make it hard to dig out later, so place it where persistence is wanted, not in a bed you mean to crop next year.

Sourcing notes

Lift rhizome divisions from healthy local stands already growing on ground like yours, so the planting material is matched to your salinity and soil. Set it as the ground-binding layer of a saline-reclamation guild alongside salt-tolerant trees and shrubs, where its mat stabilises the surface while the woody species establish.

Sources

1. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (2024). “Desmostachya bipinnata (L.) Stapf.” Plants of the World Online.
2. Ahmad, F. et al. (2014). “Evaluation of Antioxidant and DNA Damage Protection Activity of the Hydroalcoholic Extract of Desmostachya bipinnata L. Stapf.” The Scientific World Journal.
3. Patel, M. et al. (2014). “Evaluation of diuretic and laxative activity of hydro-alcoholic extract of Desmostachya bipinnata (L.) Stapf in rats.” Journal of Integrative Medicine.