Abstract
Cotton suffers from alternations of flood and drought in China. A lysimeter trial was conducted to investigate the responses of various cotton yield indices under water-stress treatments including, flood (five-day, eight-day), drought (10-day, 15-day), and five-day flood followed by 10-day drought, during the flowering and boll-forming stage. The results showed that the seed cotton yield was significantly (p < 0.05) reduced under all water-stress treatments, while the harvest index was not affected under any treatment. Significant decreases in dry matter yield, boll number, and boll hull mass were detected under flood treatments but not under drought treatments. The percentage cotton yield losses per day induced by flood and drought were 6.22% and 2.48%, respectively. Under water stress, the associations between seed cotton yield and relevant yield indices were weakened, but yield losses were still strongly related to the decreases in dry matter yield and boll number. Flood followed by drought caused significant reductions in all yield indices except harvest index; however, the reduction was much lower than the additive reductions induced by flood and drought. These results provide bases for scheduling irrigation and drainage under climate change.
Highlights
Drought and flood are two major meteorological disasters all around the world
Even though a 10-day drought could significantly reduce seed cotton yield (Table 3), when it occurred immediately after a five-day flood, no additional yield losses were found
Apart from seed cotton yield, the reductions in dry matter yield and boll number in the flood followed by drought treatment were close to the reductions from flood alone or drought alone
Summary
Drought and flood are two major meteorological disasters all around the world. As for agricultural production, drought is a major reason for soil dryness in fields (inducing agricultural drought), and flood usually brings excessive soil water; both of them severely restrict field crop yields. To eliminate the negative impacts of drought (referring to agricultural drought in this study) and flood stresses on crops, it is essential to develop appropriate irrigation and drainage schedules. In the context of global climate change, droughts and flood occur more frequently and severely; they alternate, which poses new threats to agricultural production [1,2,3,4]. It is speculated that traditional schedules of irrigation and drainage could be improved by accounting for the particular responses of crop yields under alternating drought and flood stresses. Due to climate change, this region is being confronted with increasing threats from the alternations of flood and drought during summer [4]
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