Abstract Water shortage is a known limiting factor in sustainable wheat production in the North China Plain (NCP). Conservation tillage has the potential to maximize soil water efficiency, and also influence crop growth. The distribution of crop roots plays a vital role in determining water consumption and yield production. A 10-year field experiment was established to study the relationship between soil physicochemical properties and root distribution characteristics and determine grain yield, as well as water use efficiency (WUE) of winter wheat in response to tillage. Three representative tillage practices, no-till (NT), conventional tillage (CT), and rotary tillage (RT) were used. The results indicated that RT increased the spatial and temporal root distribution, enhanced photosynthetic activities at the flowering stage, and achieved higher average grain yield by 12.0 % and 6.7 % from 2008 to 2019 as compared with NT and CT, respectively (P

中文翻译：

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华北平原冬小麦产量和水分利用效率对耕作的响应

摘要 水资源短缺是华北平原（NCP）小麦可持续生产的已知限制因素。保护性耕作有可能最大限度地提高土壤水分利用效率，同时也会影响作物生长。作物根系的分布在决定耗水量和产量方面起着至关重要的作用。一项为期 10 年的田间试验研究了土壤理化性质与根系分布特征之间的关系，并确定了冬小麦对耕作响应的粮食产量和水分利用效率 (WUE)。使用了三种代表性的耕作方式，免耕 (NT)、常规耕作 (CT) 和旋耕 (RT)。结果表明，RT增加了根系的时空分布，增强了开花期的光合活性，