Effect of nitrogen and water deficit type on the yield gap between the potential and attainable wheat yield

Abstract

Water deficit and N fertilizer are the two primary limiting factors for wheat yield in the North China plain, the most important winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) production area in China. Analyzing the yield gap between the potential yield and the attainable yield can quantify the potential for increasing wheat production and exploring the limiting factors to yield gap in the high-yielding farming region of North China Plain. The Decision Support System for Agrotechnology Transfer (DSSAT) model was used to identify methods to increase the grain yield and decrease the gap. In order to explore the impact of N and cultivars on wheat yield in the different drought types, the climate conditions during 1981 to 2011 growing seasons was categorized into low, moderate, and severe water deficit classes according to the anomaly percentage of the water deficit rate during the entire wheat growing season. There are differences (P < 0.0001) in the variations of the potential yields among three cultivars over 30 yr. For all three water deficit types, the more recent cultivars Jimai22 and Shijiazhuang8 had higher yields compared to the older 'Jinan17'. As the N fertilizer rate increased, the yield gap decreased more substantially during the low water deficit years because of the significant increase in attainable yield. Overall, the yield gaps were smaller with less water stress. Replacement of cultivars and appropriate N fertilizer application based on the forecasted drought types can narrow the yield gap effectively.

Spatio-Temporal Pattern Change of Winter Wheat Production and Its Implications in the North China Plain

“…Input factors are major driving forces of the spatial shift of grain production, as grain production is closely related to the input factors [36,41,42]. We analyzed statistical data of winter wheat input factors during 1998-2015 and found that there were significant differences in the changes of irrigation, chemical fertilizer application, and total mechanical power in different regions of the NCP.…”

Multi-scale assessment of winter wheat yield gaps with an integrated evaluation framework in the Huang-Huai-Hai farming region in China

“…The soil data for different sites were derived from the Resources and Environment Data Cloud Platform of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (http:// www.resdc.cn/), which included the mechanical composition of different soil layers, organic carbon content, pH, total nitrogen content, wilting coefficient, soil bulk density, saturated water content and other indicators. The relevant representative varieties, the crop yield data, crop management data, phenology and yields were collected from a 4-year experiment with five nitrogen (N) levels (0, 60, 120, 180 and 240 kg/ha) conducted during the 2008-2011 growing seasons in Wuqiao (Liu et al, 2015) and published journal articles (Hu et al, 2009;Jiang et al, 2009;Gong et al, 2013;Wang et al, 2013;Song, 2017;Zhang, 2018) for calibrating and evaluating the model in the seven sub-regions of the HFR. Of these data, 0.70 were used to calibrate the model and the remaining 0.30 used for model evaluation.…”

Sustainable intensification with irrigation raises farm profit despite climate emergency

“…Past work on agronomic adaptation to climate change has primarily focused on field‐scale interventions such as changes to management and/or genotype/crop type combinations to improve yield (Ibrahim et al, 2019; Langworthy et al, 2018; Liu et al, 2021; Liu, Harrison, Hunt, et al, 2020) such as that aimed at closing yield gaps (Angella et al, 2016; Bryan et al, 2014; Liu et al, 2015, 2022; Muleke, Harrison, de Voil, et al, 2022; Pradhan et al, 2015). However, higher crop yields do not necessarily translate to higher crop profitability, because above a certain level of inputs, the rate of return from increased inputs diminishes (Ibrahim et al, 2018).…”