Reasonable dry cultivation methods can balance yield and grain quality of rice

Abstract

Reducing the water consumption of rice production in China without affecting grain yield and quality is an important challenge. The purpose of this study was to explore whether different dry cultivation methods could improve rice quality while balancing yield to maintain sustainable rice production. A japonica upland rice cultivar and a japonica paddy rice cultivar were cultivated in the field with three cultivation methods: plastic film mulching dry cultivation (PFMC), bare dry cultivation (BC), and continuous flooding cultivation (CF) as control. There was no significant difference in upland rice yield between PFMC and BC, and there was also no significant difference in paddy rice yield between PFMC and CF. Compared with CF, the two varieties yield decreased significantly with BC. Dry cultivation, especially PFMC, could decrease active filling period, chalky rice rate, chalkiness, amylose content, gel consistency, breakdown viscosity, ratio of glutelin to prolamin, leaf senescence, and increase water use efficiency, protein components content, setback viscosity, grain Q-enzyme activity and average filling rate. Compared with paddy rice, upland rice had lower yield, shorter active filling period, lower chalkiness grain rate and gel consistency, and higher amylose content, breakdown viscosity, protein components content and average filling rate. Grain Q-enzyme activity and grain filling parameters were closely related to rice quality. Reasonable dry cultivation methods could balance yield and quality, especially improve the nutritional and appearance quality of rice.