Rice Production in Farmer Fields in Soil Salinity Classified Areas in Khon Kaen, Northeast Thailand

Yi Yang, Rongling Ye, Mallika Srisutham, Thanyaluck Nontasri, Supranee Sritumboon, Masayasu Maki, Koshi Yoshida, Kazuo Oki and Koki Homma ()
Additional contact information
Yi Yang: Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8572, Japan
Rongling Ye: Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8572, Japan
Mallika Srisutham: Faculty of Food and Agricultural, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen 40002, Thailand
Thanyaluck Nontasri: Land Development Department Regional 5, Khon Kaen 40000, Thailand
Supranee Sritumboon: Land Development Department Regional 5, Khon Kaen 40000, Thailand
Masayasu Maki: Faculty of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Fukushima University, Fukushima 960-1296, Japan
Koshi Yoshida: Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo 113-8654, Japan
Kazuo Oki: Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University of Advanced Science, Kyoto 621-8555, Japan
Koki Homma: Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Sendai 980-8572, Japan

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 16, 1-10

Abstract: Northeast Thailand is the largest rice cultivation region in Thailand, but the rice yield there is quite low. Soil salinity is one of the major yield restricted factors, is derived from underground rock salt, and is predicted to expand in the future. This study focused on evaluating rice productivity related to salinity conditions in Khon Kaen Province, Northeast Thailand. The field investigations were conducted from 2017 to 2019 in farmer fields in severe, moderate, and slight soil salinity classes determined by the Land Development Department of Thailand. The soil salinity on the basis of the electric conductivity of saturated soil extract (ECe) varied year to year, which seemed to be associated with precipitation. The difference in soil salinity between classes was obvious only in the drought year 2018, and reflected in the rice yield, although severe drought devastated rice yield in some fields. Plenty of rainfall may have alleviated soil salinity and rice yield reduction in other years, causing differences in rice yield that were not significant among soil salinity classes. However, salinity level evaluation by the USDA based on ECe showed that rice yield was damaged depending on the level. This study indicates that ECe-based evaluation is recommended for soil salinity in relation to rice productivity. The spatial and temporal evaluation for rice production may benefit farmers. The results in this study also showed rice production largely varied even in similar salinity levels, implying that salinity damage can be alleviated by farmer management.

Keywords: rice yield; dynamic soil salinity; salinity level at harvest; soil moisture content; rainfall (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/16/9873/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/16/9873/ (text/html)

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:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:16:p:9873-:d:884720

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().