Abstract
Sustainability of winter wheat yield under dryland conditions depends on improving soil water stored during fallow and its efficient use. A 3-year field experiment was conducted in Loess Plateau to access the effect of tillage and N (nitrogen) rates on soil water, N distribution and water- and nitrogen-use efficiency of winter wheat. Deep tillage (DT, 25–30 cm depth) and no-tillage (NT) were operated during fallow season, whereas four N rates (0, 90, 150 and 210 kg ha−1) were applied before sowing. Rates of N and variable rainfall during summer fallow period led to the difference of soil water storage. Soil water storage at anthesis and maturity was decreased with increasing N rate especially in the year with high precipitation (2014–2015). DT has increased the soil water storage at sowing, N content, numbers of spike, grain number, 1,000 grain weight, grain yield, and water and N use efficiency as compared to NT. Grain yield was significantly and positively related to soil water consumption at sowing to anthesis and anthesis to maturity, total plant N, and water-use efficiency. Our study implies that optimum N rate and deep tillage during the fallow season could improve dryland wheat production by balancing the water consumption and biomass production.
Highlights
The world’s largest Loess Plateau is located in northern China, covering Shanxi, eastern Gansu, Shaanxi, and northern Henan provinces (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013)
Our study indicated that the difference in soil water storage is due to variable rainfall during the fallow period and growth period of wheat
Our findings highlight that practicing deep tillage during fallow improved the soil water storage in 0–300 cm depth which increased water consumption during anthesis and maturity stages as compared to no-tillage
Summary
The world’s largest Loess Plateau is located in northern China, covering Shanxi, eastern Gansu, Shaanxi, and northern Henan provinces (Encyclopedia Britannica, 2013). Loess Plateau in China covers about 0.65 million km area and having 108 million population (Wang & Li, 2010). Loess Plateau has a semiarid climate with low and variable rainfall from 300–700 mm (Li & Xiao, 1992). Due to the lack of irrigation resources and deep and sparse groundwater, most of the agriculture is dryland farming completely depends on the precipitation (Zhang et al, 2009). There is a large inter-annual variation in precipitation, such as a wet year may receive two to five times more rainfall than the dry year. The production of winter wheat and other crops in Loess Plateau varies greatly with the distribution pattern and rate of rainfall (He et al, 2014)
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