Conservation tillage methods affect soil water use and spring maize yield in a semi-humid drought-prone area of China

Abstract

In the arid areas of Northwest China, water has become a key limiting factor for agricultural development, so conservation tillage management has become an important measure to improve water use efficiency and crop yield. Our experiment, conducted from 2015 to 2018, explored the effects of conventional flat planting with no mulch (NP), with straw mulch (SM), and with plastic mulch (PM); and also ridge and furrow planting without mulch (RF) and ridge-furrow planting with plastic film and straw mulch (RFPFM) on soil nutrients, soil water storage, water use efficiency, and crop yield when compared with traditional no mulch and no fertilization cultivation (CK). Four years of experiments showed that compared to CK, SM and RFPFM had significantly increased soil surface nutrient content and increased organic matter content, and the water depletion during the maize growth period of the NP, SM, PM, RF, and RFPFM treatments increased by 9.7%, 0.6%, 8.6%, 4.4%, and 14.2%, respectively. For four years, the average spring maize yields of the NP, SM, PM, RF, and RFPFM treatments increased by 36%, 87%, 115%, 40%, and 119%, compared to those of CK. The PM and RFPFM treatments' water use efficiencies were significantly different from those of the other treatments and the basic decreasing trend of water use efficiency was RFPFM > PM > SM > RF > NP > CK. In summary, we showed that because ridge-furrow planting with plastic film mulch improved both soil nutrients and crop yields, it is a preferred cultivation method for agricultural water utilization in arid areas.