Abstract
The ridge-furrow rainfall harvesting system (RFRHS) is an in-situ rainfall collection and utilization technique that has been widely adopted in global arid and semiarid farming areas because of its significant benefits to soil water availability and crop yield. However, the integrated effects of different ridge-furrow configurations on rainwater collection and crop performance are still lacking. Using a specialized database drawn from field experiments in the Loess Plateau, we examined the regional effects of three typical ridge-furrow configurations, namely high (>1:1), uniform (=1:1), and low (<1:1) ridge-furrow ratios, on soil water storage, crop water use efficiency (WUE), and grain yield. The high ridge-furrow ratio achieved the greatest improvements in soil water storage than the other two ratios. Compared with traditional flat planting without ridge-furrow configuration, crop yield and WUE were significantly increased by 37.65%, 27.12%, 31.70%, and 47.70%, 30.00%, and 17.80% under high, uniform, and low ridge-furrow ratios, respectively. Improvements in crop yield and WUE due to the different ridge-furrow configurations were jointly affected by climate, soil organic matter, and fertilizer application. The mean annual precipitation of 600 mm and the mean annual temperature of 12 ℃ can be used as the threshold for selecting the ratio of ridge–furrow. An increase in soil organic matter gradually declined the increase in grain yield and WUE owing to the three ridge–furrow ratios, such that the maximum effect was found for the high ridge–furrow ratio. Among the three ratios, the improvements in crop yield and WUE were most notable when the application rates of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer were 100–200 kg ha−1 and 101–125 kg ha−1, respectively. This study examined the scientific basis of a ridge–furrow farming practice for enhancing rainfall use and crop WUE; thus, these results offer novel insights for the optimized design of a ridge–furrow ratio in dryland agroecosystems of the Loess Plateau by taking into account site-based climatic conditions, soil fertility, and fertilization input level.
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