Abstract
: Saturated soil culture is one of the water saving techniques that can improve water productivity. However, it is either less implemented or adopted because it consumes more time and energy. Therefore, an experiment was conducted to determine the effective water depth that can keep soil moisture close to saturation for a commonly practiced irrigation interval, combined with a rainfall pattern for increasing water productivity. The design was a randomized complete block with three replications and four water treatments representing 120% (T120), 180% (T180), 240% (T240), and 300% (T300) of soil saturation or the application of 2, 3, 4 and 5 cm water depth. The results showed that the application of 3 cm was the effective depth. It decreased plant height, tiller number, chlorophyll content, and panicle number per hill by 12.37%, 20.84%, 7.59%, and 70.98%, respectively. The decrease of these parameters is followed by total recovery due to effective rainfall contribution, which led to low yield sacrifice (6% of reduction) and 40% of water saving. We argue that weekly application of a 3 cm water depth and matching crop needed-water period with the onset of rainfall may be implemented and recommended as suitable saturated soil culture practice for rice production in high water demand conditions.
Highlights
The high competition for water is putting a great deal of strain on the availability of irrigation water, especially for high water intensive crops, such as lowland rice, and the situation is exacerbated by climate change
The results showed that, soil moisture was frequently located between water stress threshold and saturation at the vegetative stage, the reduction of irrigation water affected leaves chlorophyll content, plant height and tiller number
It was seen in our study that severe water stress in the lowest treatment (T120) did not affect root development and dry biomass at active tillering, and chlorophyll content at the panicle initiation, and may be explained by the adaption mechanism developed by plants to overcome high water stress by extracting faster water in depth
Summary
The high competition for water is putting a great deal of strain on the availability of irrigation water, especially for high water intensive crops, such as lowland rice, and the situation is exacerbated by climate change. In the past ten years, growth in rice yield has dropped below 1% per year worldwide, while an increase of rice yield, to more than 1.2% per year, is required to meet the growing demand for food [1]. Increased rice supply is constrained by the lack of sufficient water availability [2] induced by increasing demands of other sectors. In such circumstances, the great challenge for agriculture is to produce more rice with less water if food security is to be maintained, irrigation water use efficiency should play a greater role in meeting future rice demands. According to Wang et al [4], the only solution for worldwide water shortage problem is to make efficient use of agricultural water
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