Supplemental irrigation strategy for improving grain filling, economic return, and production in winter wheat under the ridge and furrow rainwater harvesting system

Shahzad Ali, Xiangcheng Ma, Qianmin Jia, Irshad Ahmad, Shakeel Ahmad, Zhang Sha, Bai Yun, Adil Muhammad, Xiaolong Ren, Shahen Shah, Habib Akbar, Tie Cai, Jiahua Zhang and Zhikuan Jia

Agricultural Water Management, 2019, vol. 226, issue C

Abstract: The plastic-covered ridge and furrow rainwater harvesting (RFRH) system has been used widely to enhance crop productivity in the semiarid regions of China. We conducted a field study during 2015–2017 where the RFRH method was combined with deficit irrigation to decrease the irrigation water usage and improve the crop water productivity (CWP) and irrigation water productivity (IWP). Under the RFRH system, the amount of irrigation was reduced by half compared with that under traditional flat planting (TF) with border irrigation due to the effects of precipitation harvesting. Half of the deficit irrigation was supplied before wintering and the remaining half at the jointing stage. The following eight treatments were tested: RFRH system with 75 mm deficit irrigation (R75), 37 mm irrigation (R37), 18 mm irrigation (R18), and 0 mm irrigation (R0); TF cultivation with 150 mm irrigation (F150), 75 mm irrigation (F75), 37 mm irrigation (F37), and 0 mm irrigation (F0). The results showed that the irrigation volume doubled under conventional border irrigation but the soil water storage was greater under RFRH with deficit irrigation. The R75 treatment resulted in significantly greater soil water storage, reduced evapotranspiration (44.2%), and a higher grain yield (14.6%), thereby increasing CWP (64.8%), ICWP (irrigation crop water productivity) (44.2%), and IWP (57.0%) compared with F150. R75 improved the biomass per plant, leaf area index, and net income for farmers (by 17.5%) compared with F150. Thus, we recommend R75 for decreasing the irrigation water usage and increasing the effective consumption of precipitation in semiarid regions.

Keywords: Border irrigation; Evapotranspiration; Ridge-furrow system; Semiarid region; Crop water productivity; Winter wheat (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377419308509
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:226:y:2019:i:c:s0378377419308509

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2019.105842

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 ().