A synergistic increase in water and nitrogen use efficiencies in winter wheat cultivars released between the 1940s and the 2010s for cultivation in the drylands of the shaanxi Province in China

Huida Lian, Cheng Qin, Zhan He, Jiayu Niu, Cong Zhang, Ting Sang, Hongbing Li and Suiqi Zhang

Agricultural Water Management, 2020, vol. 240, issue C

Abstract: Although soil water and nutrients are two of the most important factors affecting growth and production of winter wheat, genetic improvement for wheat responses to water and nitrogen (N) levels has been rarely studied. In this paper, five dryland winter wheat cultivars representative of widely cultivated varieties released from the 1940s to the 2010s in Shaanxi Province, China, were grown in an open rainout shelter (which could be closed when rain threatened) under four contrasting water/N treatment combinations. Yield-related parameters, biomass accumulation, crop water productivity (WUE), and nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) were determined. The results indicated that water deficit and low N treatment caused a significant reduction in grain yield and flag leaf photosynthesis in the five wheat cultivars studied. However, NUE, grain protein content, and partial factor nitrogen productivity were significantly improved by N application under water deficit. Our results confirm the genetic improvement for plant growth, N accumulation, and grain yield in wheat cultivars released from the 1940s to the 2010s; newergenotypes showed the highest NUE under water deficit combined with N limited conditions. Additionally, based on principal component analysis, we found that the newer genotypes, i.e. those from the 2000s and the 2010s, are more sensitive to low nitrogen and water stress compared with the older genotypes from the 1980s, which are more sensitive to the combined effect of water and N limitations. Our findings provide a theoretical support for further improvement of the wheat yield potential, selection, and breeding of high-efficiency varieties in arid and semi-arid areas.

Keywords: Winter wheat; Genetic improvement; Water use efficiency; Nitrogen use efficiency; Grain yield (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377420305151
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:240:y:2020:i:c:s0378377420305151

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2020.106308

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 ().