Effects of Tillage Regimes on Water Consumption and Dry Matter Accumulation in Dryland Wheat

Abstract

The area of dryland wheat is large in Huang-Huai-Hai Rivers region, where grain yield of wheat was low and unstable because of deficient and variable precipitation. Conservation tillage is an important cultivation mode to stimulate crop production and has been a hotspot in cultivation research of winter wheat. Minimum tillage and no-tillage are believed to significantly increase grain yield and water use efficiency of dryland wheat. A field experiment was conducted to study the effects of tillage modes on water consumption and dry matter accumulation of wheat in hill area of Shandong Province in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 growing seasons. Compared to strip rotary tillage (SR), rotary tillage after subsoiling (RS), and rotary tillage (R) treatments, strip rotary tillage after subsoiling (SRS) treatment was beneficial to reduce water consumption amount from sowing to pre-winter stage, increase water consumption amount from anthesis to maturity stage, and promote the ratio of water consumption after anthesis to the total water consumption. The water reduction amount in 0-20 cm soil layer was lower in SRS treatment than in RS and R treatments from sowing to jointing, while that in 40-160 cm soil layer was higher in SRS treatment than in SR and R treatments from jointing to maturity. In the whole growing period of 2009-2010 and seedling, anthesis, and filling stages of 2010-2011, the evaporation of SRS was lower than that of RS or R treatment, which was equivalent to that of SR with no significant difference. SRS treatment had the highest dry matter accumulation amount from anthesis to maturity stage. Compared to SR and R treatments, SRS treatment had higher water consumption amount and water use efficiency. There was no significant difference between SRS and SR treatments in water consumption and water use efficiency, but the grain yield was the highest in SRS treatment. Therefore, SRS treatment is considered as the best tillage treatment under the experimental condition.

Effects of sowing methods and nitrogen rates on photosynthetic characteristics, yield, and quality of winter wheat

“…Fertilizers constitute an integral part of improved crop production technology. Nitrogen (N) is an essential mineral nutrient for plant growth, expands soil fertility and crop productivity (López-Bellido et al 2012, Wang et al 2012. A proper amount of N fertilizer application is considered a key for high crop production (Liang et al 2019).…”

Subsoiling increases aggregate-associated organic carbon, dry matter, and maize yield on the North China Plain

“…It is also possible that the length of time the NT process takes differs by region ( Boomsma et al, 2010 ). Wang et al (2012) showed that NT was beneficial to increasing the contents of soil aggregates, thereby increasing soil nutrients; however, it was suggested that years of NT would increase soil compactness and reduce crop yields. Here, NT resulted in the lowest maize yield and it was found that long-term NT could cause soil hardening and increases in bulk density ( Kan et al, 2020a ), affecting the development of crop root systems, as well as nutrient and water absorption, which may be why the lowest yields were recorded with NT in this study ( Ren et al, 2018 ).…”

Nitrogen Use Efficiency and Adaptation of Elite Varieties of Dryland Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in the Loess Plateau of China

“…The nitrogen accumulation in winter wheat under high N supply significantly exceeds the estimated sum of structural N and photosynthetic characteristics [30]. Showed that, under high nitrogen supply, the accumulation of above-ground nitrogen in winter wheat was as high as 5.1 kg ha −1 , which was more than 60% higher than the critical nitrogen concentration, indicating a high proportion of stored nitrogen in plants [31].Therefore, quantitative analysis of structural nitrogen, "photosynthetic characteristics, and nitrogen is of great significance for determining nitrogen accumulation and translocation in wheat plants. The results showed that compared to other in dryland wheat varieties, Yunhan-20410 had higher structural nitrogen (53.42 kg ha -1 on average), and Yunhan-618 had a higher structural nitrogen (50.47 kg ha -1 ), indicating that Yunhan-20410 had a higher structural nitrogen than other wheat varieties.…”