Abstract
To provide a new way to increase water storage and retention of dryland wheat, a field study was conducted at Wenxi experimental site of Shanxi Agricultural University. The effect of subsoiling in fallow period on soil water storage, accumulation of proline, and formation of grain protein after anthesis were determined. Our results showed that subsoiling in fallow period could increase water storage in the 0–300 cm soil at pre-sowing stage and at anthesis stage with low or medium N application, especially for the 60–160 cm soil. However, the proline content, glutamine synthetase (GS) activity, glutamate dehydrogenase (GDH) activity in flag leaves and grains were all decreased by subsoiling in fallow period. In addition, the content of albumin, gliadin, and total protein in grains were also decreased while globulin content, Glu/Gli, protein yield, and glutelin content were increased. With N application increasing, water storage of soil layers from 20 to 200 cm was decreased at anthesis stage. High N application resulted in the increment of proline content and GS activity in grains. Besides, correlation analysis showed that soil storage in 40–160 cm soil was negatively correlated with proline content in grains; proline content in grains was positively correlated with GS and GDH activity in flag leaves. Contents of albumin, globulin and total protein in grains were positively correlated with proline content in grains and GDH activity in flag leaves. In conclusion, subsoiling in fallow period, together with N application at 150 kg·hm−2, was beneficial to increase the protein yield and Glu/Gli in grains which improve the quality of wheat.
Highlights
Natural precipitation is the only water resource of dryland wheat
Compared with CK, soil water storage in SS were increased by 16.08 mm, 14.21 mm, and 6.23 mm in the depth of 0–100 cm, 100–200 cm, and 200–300 cm, respectively
The difference of water storage between SS and CK was statistically significant in the depth of 80, 200, 260, and 300 cm under low N application and in the depth of 20– 40 cm and 80–180 cm under medium N application
Summary
Natural precipitation is the only water resource of dryland wheat. Rainfalls always concentrate from July to September at region producing dryland wheat in loess plateau, which is called fallow period. It is the water stored in this period that determines the soil moisture before dryland wheat is sown which has a great influence on the production of dryland wheat [1,2,3,4]. In these days, though great progress has been made in the technology of water storage and retention in dryland cultivation [5,6,7,8], water storage and retention in fallow period had been ignored. Finding an effective way to raise the moisture content in fallow period soil is significant to the dryland wheat production
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