Water productivity and seed cotton yield in response to deficit irrigation: A global meta-analysis

Minghui Cheng, Haidong Wang, Junliang Fan, Shaohui Zhang, Yanli Wang, Yuepeng Li, Xin Sun, Ling Yang and Fucang Zhang

Agricultural Water Management, 2021, vol. 255, issue C

Abstract: The scarcity of water resources has posed serious threats to the sustainable development of agriculture and promoted the need for water-saving technologies. Deficit irrigation has been widely used as a water-saving practice globally. Although it does facilitate the improvement in crop water productivity (WP), its influence on crop yield varies considerably. Therefore, a global meta-analysis was conducted to systematically and quantitatively analyze the responses of both WP and seed cotton yield to deficit irrigation, and explore the optimal conditions for the better application of deficit irrigation in practice. It was found that, although deficit irrigation averagely increased WP by 5.3% compared with full irrigation, it caused a significant decline in seed cotton yield by 20.2% on average. Overall, deficit irrigation performed best at the seedling+blooming stage of cotton under 80–100% full irrigation, in regions with seasonal precipitation ≥ 120 mm and average annual temperature ≥ 10 ℃. Cotton planted in medium textured soils with bulk density ≥ 1.35 g cm−3 obtained highest seed cotton yield and WP. Seed cotton yield and WP were increased by ridge planting with film mulching. Additionally, drip irrigation was most beneficial for seed cotton yield than sprinkler and furrow irrigations. Deficit irrigation throughout the whole growing season of cotton was the most undesirable measure. Seed cotton yield and WP were significantly affected by fertilization rate, and the appropriate nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium application rates were 300–400 kg N ha−1, 79–105 kg P ha−1 and 100–133 kg K ha−1, respectively. In conclusion, higher WP was obtained with acceptable reduction in seed cotton yield under deficit irrigation. However, to optimize deficit irrigation in practice, irrigation method and amount, deficit stage, climate condition, soil property, mulching mode and fertilization rate must be further considered.

Keywords: Deficit irrigation; Seed cotton yield; Water productivity; Global meta-analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377421002924
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:255:y:2021:i:c:s0378377421002924

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2021.107027

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 ().