Alternative Furrow Irrigation Combined with Topdressing Nitrogen at Jointing Help Yield Formation and Water Use of Winter Wheat under No-Till Ridge Furrow Planting System in Semi-Humid Drought-Prone Areas of China

Abstract

Benefiting from the high–farmland construction program in China, one–off irrigation can be guaranteed in most fields in semi–humid drought–prone areas in China. However, little information is available on water and nitrogen (N) management in wheat production under this condition. This study aimed to explore the effects of alternative furrow irrigation (AFI) and topdressing N fertilizer (TN) on wheat productivity under a no–till ridge–furrow planting system in semi–humid drought–prone areas. The experimental design was as follows: two furrow irrigation (FI) methods, namely, EFI (every furrow irrigation) and AFI (alternative furrow irrigation) with 75 mm at the jointing stage were set as the main treatments. Two topdressing N (TN) patterns, namely, NTN (0 kg ha−1 of N) and TN (60 kg ha−1 of N) along with irrigation were set as the secondary treatments. Moreover, a traditional planting practice with no irrigation and no topdressing N (NINTN) was set as control. In 2018–2020, a field experiment was carried out to investigate the effects on soil water, leaf chlorophyll relative content (SPAD) and net photosynthetic rate (Pn), aboveground dry matter assimilates, grain yield, water use efficiency (WUE) and economic benefit. We found that both FI methods and TN patterns significantly influenced soil water content. Compared with NINTN, the soil water content in each combination of the FI method and TN pattern was effectively improved at the booting and anthesis stages, leading to the significant increase in SPAD and Pn in leaves, post–anthesis dry matter accumulation (POA), grain yield, WUE and economic benefit of winter wheat. Compared with the EFI, averaged across years and TN patterns, the AFI technique increased the soil water storage at booting and anthesis stages and significantly improved the Pn at early milk (4.9%) and early dough (7.5%) stages, POA (40.6%) and its contribution to grain (CRPOA, 27.6%), the grain yield (10.2%), WUE (9.1%) and economic benefit (9.1%). In addition, compared with the NTN, the TN pattern significantly increased the water computation by wheat from booting to maturity, enhanced leaf Pn after anthesis and POA, and finally resulted in the increase in grain yield (14.7–21.9%) and WUE (9.6–21.1%). Thus, the greatest improvement in the leaf photosynthetic characteristics, aboveground dry matter assimilates, grain yield, WUE and economic benefit was achieved under AFITN treatment. Above all, it can be concluded that the AFITN with AFI of 75 mm and TN of 60 kg ha−1 at jointing was an alternative management strategy for optimizing yield formation and water use of winter wheat. This study provided new insights into improving wheat productivity in drought–prone areas where one–off irrigation can be guaranteed.

Coupled one-off alternate furrow irrigation with nitrogen topdressing at jointing optimizes soil nitrate-N distribution and wheat nitrogen productivity in dryland

“…Variations in experimental conditions such as climate, soil properties, and cultivation managements may account for differences in study outcomes. In this study, although the precipitation amount in whole year and wheat growing season is higher, the N uptake efficiency in 2019−2020 was obviously lower than 2018−2019, which mainly because the consecutively extreme high temperature (from2 May to 4 May, over 40°C) occurred during early grain filling stage in 2020−2021, thus resulting in a marked decrease in grains per spike and 1000-grain weight ( Wu et al., 2023 ), and finally decreasing the grain yield ( Table 6 ) and grain N accumulation ( Table 5 ). Ru et al.…”

“…Our research reveals that the techniques of furrow irrigation (FI), alternative furrow irrigation (AFI), and topdressing nitrogen (TN) all contributed to a significant upsurge in winter wheat’s grain yield. This mainly ascribe to the improvement of soil moisture ( Wu et al., 2023 ) and N supply ( Table 2 , Figure 3 ). Notably, the AFITN treatment outperformed the NINTN by 63.2–94.4% in the two years, indicating a substantial margin for yield enhancement in dryland furrow−seeded (FS) wheat systems provided by a coupled application of one-off AFI and TN at the jointing stage.…”

“…These outcomes suggest that NUE in winter wheat can be markedly augmented through FI and AFI, particularly for AFI under both NTN and TN conditions. The enhancement results chiefly from FI and AFI’s significant increase in soil moisture content ( Wu et al., 2023 ) and the optimized nitrate−N distribution from booting to maturity ( Table 2 , Figure 3 ), thus balancing the plant N requirement and soil N supply, finally elevating the plant N absorption, accumulation, and utilization proficiency ( Chen et al., 2020 ; Jia et al., 2021 ). Contrastingly, there have been instances where AFI was associated with reduced NUE in winter wheat ( Sepaskhah and Hosseini, 2008 ) and plant N uptake for sugar beets in Iran ( Mehdi et al., 2017 ).…”