Journal
SCIENCE OF THE TOTAL ENVIRONMENT
Volume 618, Issue -, Pages 112-120Publisher
ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2017.10.284
Keywords
Growing degree days; Harvest index; Kernel number per ear; Thousand-kernel weight
Categories
Funding
- National Key Research and Development Program of China [2016YFD0300105, 2016YFD0300401]
- Earmarked Fund for Modern Agro-Industry Technology Research System [CARS-3]
- China Scholarship Council [201706355031]
- Doctoral Scientific Research Foundation of Northwest AF University [Z109021711]
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The groundwater table has fallen sharply over the last 30 years on the North China Plain, resulting in a shortage of water for winter wheat irrigation. Reducing irrigation may be an important strategy to maintain agricultural sustainability in the region; however, few studies have evaluated the transition from conventional irrigation management practices to reduced irrigation management practices in the winter wheat-summer maize rotation system. Here, we compare the yield, water consumption, and water use efficiency of winter wheat-summer maize rotation under conventional irrigation and reduced irrigation on the North China Plain from 2012 to 2015. Reducing irrigation decreased the yield but increased the water use efficiency and significantly advanced the harvest date of winter wheat. As a result, the summer maize sowing date advanced significantly, and the flowering date subsequently advanced 2-8 days, thus extending the summer maize grain-filling stage. Therefore, the yield and water use efficiency of summer maize were higher under reduced irrigation than conventional irrigation, which compensated for the winter wheat yield loss under reduced irrigation. In addition, under reduced irrigation from 2012 to 2015, the yield and water use efficiency advantage of the winter wheat-summer maize rotation ranged from 0.0 to 9.7% and from 4.1 to 14.7%, respectively, and water consumption and irrigated water decreased by 20-61 mm and 150 mm, respectively, compared to conventional irrigation. Overall, the reduced irrigation management practice involving no irrigation after sowing winter wheat, and sowing summer maize on June 7 produced the most favorable grain yield with superb water use efficiency in the winter wheat-summer maize rotation. This study indicates that reducing irrigation could be an efficient means to cope with water resource shortages while maintaining crop production sustainability on the North China Plain. (c) 2017 Published by Elsevier B.V.
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