Optimizing water management practice to increase potato yield and water use efficiency in North China

Abstract

Potato is one of the staple food crops in North China. However, potato production in this region is threatened by the low amount and high spatial-temporal variation of precipitation. Increasing yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of potato by various water management practices under water resource limitation is of great importance for ensuring food security in China. However, the contributions of different water management practices to yield and WUE of potato have been rarely investigated across North China's potato planting region. Based on meta-analysis of field experiments from the literature and model simulation, this study quantified the potential yields of potatoes without water and fertilizer limitation, and yield under irrigated and rainfed conditions, and the corresponding WUEs across four potato planting regions including the Da Hinggan Mountains (DH), the Foothills of Yanshan hilly (YH), the North foot of the Yinshan Mountains (YM), and the Loess Plateau (LP) in North China. Simulated average potential potato tuber dry weight yield by the APSIM-Potato Model was 12.4 t ha−1 for the YH region, 11.4 t ha−1 for the YM region, 11.2 t ha−1 for the DH region, and 10.7 t ha−1 for the LP region, respectively. Observed rainfed potato tuber dry weight yield accounted for 61, 30, 28 and 24% of the potential yield in the DH, YH, YM, and LP regions. The maximum WUE of 2.2 kg m−3 in the YH region, 2.1 kg m−3 in the DH region, 1.9 kg m−3 in the YM region and 1.9 kg m−3 in the LP region was achieved under the potential yield level. Ridge-furrow planting could boost yield by 8–49% and WUE by 2–36% while ridge-furrow planting with film mulching could boost yield by 35–89% and WUE by 7–57% across North China. Our study demonstrates that there is a large potential to increase yield and WUE simultaneously by combining ridge-furrow planting with film mulching and supplemental irrigation in different potato planting regions with limited water resources.