Effects of plant density and mepiquat chloride application on cotton boll setting in wheat–cotton double cropping system

Abstract

Sowing cotton directly after harvesting wheat in the Yangtze River Valley of China requires early mature of cotton without yield reduction. Boll-setting period synchronisation and more yield bolls distributed at the upper and middle canopy layers are also required for harvesting. The objective of this study is to quantify the individual and interaction effects of plant density and plant growth regulator mepiquat chloride (MC) on temporal and spatial distributions of yield bolls, as well as yield and yield components. During the 2013–2016 cotton growing seasons, the experiments were conducted on a short-season cotton cultivar CRRI50 at Yangzhou University, China. Various combinations of plant density (12.0, 13.5 and 15.0 plants m−2) and MC dose (180, 270 and 360 g ha−1) were applied on cotton plants. The combination of 13.5 plants m−2 and 270 g ha−1 MC resulted in the greatest boll number per unit area, the highest daily boll setting number and more than 90% of bolls positioned within 45–80 cm above the ground. In conclusion, appropriate MC dose in combination of high plant density could synchronize boll-setting period and retain more bolls at the upper and middle canopy layers without yield reduction in the system of direct-seeded cotton after wheat harvest, and thus overcome the labor-intensive problem in current transplanting cropping system.