Influence of plastic film mulch on maize water use efficiency in the Loess Plateau of China

Wen Lin, Wenzhao Liu, Shanshan Zhou and Chunfen Liu

Agricultural Water Management, 2019, vol. 224, issue C, -

Abstract: Water is the main limiting factor for crop growth in dryland farming areas. Plastic film mulch (PM) is widely used to improve water use efficiency (WUE) and increase crop yield over conventional methods (no mulch, NM) in China. To get a better understanding about PM influence on water use process in the field, we defined WUETWI as the ratio of yield (Y) to the total water input (TWI), and divided WUETWI into 4 steps by means of a systematic and quantitative approach. The 4 steps included ratio of available soil water (SW) to TWI (SW0+P, where SW0 is available soil water at the sowing, P is seasonal precipitation), ratio of crop evapotranspiration (ETC) to SW, ratio of crop transpiration (T) to ETC and transpiration efficiency (WUET, Y/T). Three field experiments were conducted to analyze the influence of PM on soil moisture content, water consumption, and the grain yield of dryland spring maize (Zea mays L.). Results showed that, compared with NM, spring maize yield of PM was increased by 28.6%, and the WUETWI of PM was increased by 26.4% on average in the experiment 1. Since ETc with PM was slightly higher than that with NM, the ETC/SW was increased by 3.9%. In the experiment 2, the T/ETC with PM was 77.7% on average, 30.6% higher than that with NM; the Y/T increased by 13.6% from NM to PM. Precipitation storage efficiency increased linearly with the percentage of PM. Improved crop growth under PM led to higher crop biomass and higher leaf area index, which might result in higher transpiration rate. The T/ETC under PM was also increased.

Keywords: Spring maize; Yield; Evapotranspiration; Dryland farming; Total water input; Efficiency chain (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377418308679
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:224:y:2019:i:c:18

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2019.105710

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural Water Management is currently edited by B.E. Clothier, W. Dierickx, J. Oster and D. Wichelns

More articles in Agricultural Water Management from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().