Abstract
The development of large-scale farming has encouraged the adoption of mechanical transplanting techniques for rice production. However, the increased farming operation times that often occur under large-scale farming conditions necessitate shortening the duration of rice growth, especially that of late-season rice; therefore, rice cultivars with short growth durations are popular under such conditions. A field experiment using two short-duration rice cultivars (SRCs), i.e., Jiuliangyou 3 and Shengyou 9520, and two long-duration rice cultivars (LRCs), i.e., Shengyou 957 and Tianyouhuazhan, was conducted in the late season in Yongan and Santang, Hunan Province, China in 2017 and 2018. The grain yield and yield attributes were compared between the SRCs and LRCs, showing that the SRCs, which exhibited an 11–12-day shorter growth period, revealed similar grain yield to the LRCs. The SRCs also exhibited a 10–31% higher spikelet filling rate and a 13% higher harvest index than the LRCs. Moreover, the biomass accumulation, crop growth rate, and apparent radiation use efficiency of the SRCs were significantly higher than those of the LRCs during the postheading phase. Our results indicate that the higher spikelet filling rate, the harvest index, and the apparent radiation use efficiency of the postheading period were the underlying factors for the SRCs’ grain yield.
Highlights
The double-rice cropping system is considered an important and promising technique for sustainable rice production to ensure worldwide food security
Four rice cultivars, i.e., Shengyou 957 and Tianyouhuazhan and Jiuliangyou 3 and Shengyou 9520, were evaluated for their growth, yield, and yield-contributing traits to identify high-yielding short-duration rice cultivars (SRCs) that are suitable for late-season machine transplantation
The results showed that the SRCs exhibited an 11−12-day shorter growth duration than the long-duration rice cultivars (LRCs)
Summary
The double-rice cropping system is considered an important and promising technique for sustainable rice production to ensure worldwide food security. Due to urban expansion and a shortage of the labor required for rice production, the double cropping of rice has substantially declined in China [1,2]. Mechanized large-scale farming is an executable way to utilize labor effectively. The shift from traditional manual transplanting to mechanical transplanting creates new problems, such as impeding seasonal double-cropping rice (i.e., two rice crops grown consecutively during the wet and dry seasons) [3]. The amount of farmland being rented has increased, due to the government subsidizing farming in China in recent years; the leasing of farmland by farmers for large-scale
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