Meta-analysis of ridge-furrow cultivation effects on maize production and water use efficiency

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2020.106144Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Ridge-furrow cultivation (RF) effects on maize yield and water use efficiency (WUE) were evaluated.

  • RF increased maize yield and WUE by 47 % and 39 %.

  • The efficacy of RF on maize WUE and yield varied by climate, soil and mulching managements.

  • Site-specific adoption of RF is needed to improve maize WUE and yield.

Abstract

Ridge-furrow cultivation (RF) is a popular dryland agricultural technique in China, but its effects on maize yield, total water consumption during crop growing stage (ET), and water use efficiency (WUE) have not been systematically analyzed. Here we conducted a meta-analysis of the RF effects on maize yield, ET and WUE based on the data collected from peer-reviewed literature. Yield, ET and WUE varied with climate, soil and mulching management. Averaged across all the geographic locations, RF increased the yield and WUE of maize by 47 % and 39 %, respectively, but no effects on ET. An increase in the yield and WUE occurred under RF in regions regardless of the mean growing season air temperature (MT) or a mean precipitation during the growing season (MP), although there was a trend that RF is more beneficial under low MP. RF also decreased ET in regions with MT>12 °C. RF increased the yield and WUE in regions with medium or fine soil texture. RF increased the yield, ET, and WUE in regions with low soil bulk density (BD) (≤1.3 g cm−3). But in areas where BD is larger than 1.3 g cm−3, RF only increased the yield and WUE. RF increased the yield and WUE with or without mulching, but decreased ET when no mulching was used. Together, optimizing RF effects on the yield, ET and WUE in maize was largely dependent on environmental conditions and management practices.

Introduction

Dryland crop production remains the primary source of staple food for the majority of densely-populated regions such as China, sub-Saharan Africa and India (Daryanto et al., 2017). Water supply constraints are recognized as major factors affecting dryland crop production (Wang et al., 2018a), thus dryland crop production is a continuous exercise to allocate the limited rain-water supply to meet the total water consumption during crop growing stage (ET). Therefore, the development of methods to improve agricultural productivity and water use efficiency (WUE) in regions with limited water resources remains crucial (Wu et al., 2015).

By increasing soil water availability and yield, ridge-furrow cultivation (RF) has been widely used in dryland maize cultivation in northwest China since the 1980s (Li et al., 2007; Ren et al., 2008). In the past forty years, many field experiments have been conducted to examine the effects of RF on maize production in China, but the reported effects of RF on maize yield, ET and WUE varied greatly due to different climate, soil factors, and mulching management practices.

There are many studies showing different extents of yield increase in different climatic gradients across China. A study showed RF increased yield, water and precipitation productivity in maize as compared with flat-plot cultivation (FP) under a typical sub-humid drought-prone climate (Yin et al., 2018). An increase in maize yield and water productivity was found under RF in semiarid regions of China (Jia et al., 2018a, b). The RF and plastic-mulching technique provides a potential opportunity of substantially increasing crop yields in semiarid regions of China, but this technology brings about a challenge in maintaining soil fertility (Zhou et al., 2012). Wang et al. (2018b) also demonstrated that RF with plastic mulching is an effective drought-resistant farming technology, which has been widely used in the semiarid regions of China, and increased crop yields by more than 30 %. One study reported that the RF was combined with irrigation to increase the crop water use efficiency in a semi-humid climate (Wu et al., 2015). The yield and WUE were significantly higher under RF with low fertilizer as compared with high fertilizer and medium fertilizer in wet year. However, in both normal and drought years, the grain yield and WUE were significantly higher under RF with medium fertilizer (Zhang et al., 2018). Another study showed that a significant increase range was observed under the average grain yields in the RF with plastic mulch and high irrigation amount, RF with plastic mulch- and low irrigation amount and RF with high irrigation amount treatments between two years with different precipitation amount (Dong et al., 2018a). These studies indicated that there were various effects of RF on the yield and WUE in different regions resulted from different temperature, precipitation and soil conditions.

Variability in results were also found among different mulching management practices. In southeast Kenya, the grain yield and WUE in RF with plastic mulch treatments were increased as compared with RF without plastic film (Mo et al., 2016). In addition, Liu et al. (2014a) showed that RF with plastic mulch could sustain high grain yields in maize and maintain soil water balance under semiarid environment. The RF with plastic mulch increased grain yield and WUE as compared to no mulch (Li et al., 2013; Liu et al., 2014b). A different increase range in the maize yields was found among RF with mulched with plastic film, biodegradable film, maize straw (Li et al., 2013). However, where the RF with plastic mulch has been applied in successive years, the annual balance of soil water has been affected and the risk of soil desiccation exacerbated (Wang et al., 2018b), and white pollution. Overall, the effects RF on the yield and WUE varied with mulching management practices.

The impacts of RF on the yield, ET, and WUE in maize mainly depend on several co-varying factors (i.e., agroclimatic regions, soil texture, and mulching management). A meta-analysis showed that soil mulching significantly enhances yields as well as water- and nitrogen-use efficiency of maize and wheat (Qin et al., 2015). Yu et al. (2018) documented benefits and limitations to straw- and plastic-film mulch on maize yield and WUE using a meta-analysis across hydrothermal gradients. By covering the ridges with plastic and channeling rainwater into a very narrow planting zone (furrow), a meta-analysis showed that plastic mulching resulted in a yield increase (Daryanto et al., 2017).

However, the effects of RF on the yield, ET, and WUE of maize have not been quantified across a range of agroecological conditions which incorporate different environmental and management factors. As site-specific field experiments often vary, meta-analysis is useful for summarizing the results from numerous independent experiments on RF (Hedges et al., 1999). Therefore, the main objectives of this study were to conduct a meta-analysis to (1) evaluate the effects of RF on the yield, ET, and WUE of maize, and (2) determine how the effects vary with environmental and mulching management factors.

Section snippets

Database

We searched for articles reporting the impact of RF on maize production and WUE in the arid and semiarid rain-fed areas of China using Web of Science and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The search only included combinations of the following terms: (i) ridge-furrow, maize, yield, and water use efficiency or (ii) ridge and furrow, corn, yield, and WUE.

We systematically reviewed all results published before February 2019. The articles were included in the database only if they met the

Results

Averaged across a wide range of environmental and management conditions, RF increased maize yield and WUE by 47 % and 39 %, respectively. RF, however, did not impact ET (Fig. 3). The lnR of WUE was significantly and positively related with yield (P < 0.0001). There was a significant (P < 0.05) negative relationship between the lnR of WUE and ET (Table 2), indicating that the increase in WUE under RF was related to the increase in yield and decrease in ET.

Climate impact

Our meta-analysis showed the effects of RF on yield, ET and WUE varied with climate (i.e., temperature and precipitation). RF significantly increased soil topsoil temperature during early spring, resulting in the promotion of plant growth (Li et al., 2013). Early spring is usually characterized by freezing soil temperature and therefore increasing soil temperature contributes to greater yield under RF. Our results, however, showed that the impacts of RF were positive to yield and WUE regardless

Conclusions

Our results showed that RF had no effects on ET, but significantly increased WUE by 39 %, which contributed to a 47 % increase in maize yield. RF, a practice that is indigenous to China and India and now spreading around the world, is an important and innovative water-saving tool for increasing crop yields and securing food supply in arid and semiarid regions. However, such increase occurs at the expense of a large amount of soil water and fertilizer. Because the responses of maize yield, ET,

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgments

We thank the anonymous reviewers and editors for their constructive comments on this manuscript. We gratefully acknowledge financial support for this research from the projects funded by the Shaanxi Natural Science Basic Research Program (2019JQ-642), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2018M643749), and the Doctoral Scientific Research Foundation of Northwest A&F University (Z109021711).

References (51)

  • X.L. Li et al.

    Ridge-furrow planting of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.) for improved rainwater harvest in rainfed semiarid areas in Northwest China

    Soil Tillage Res.

    (2007)
  • R. Li et al.

    Effects on soil temperature, moisture, and maize yield of cultivation with ridge and furrow mulching in the rain-fed area of the Loess Plateau

    China. Agric. Water Manage.

    (2013)
  • C. Li et al.

    Ridge–furrow with plastic film mulching practice improves maize productivity and resource use efficiency under the wheat–maize double–cropping system in dry semi–humid areas

    Field Crop Res.

    (2017)
  • X. Liu et al.

    How efficient is film fully-mulched ridge-furrow cropping to conserve rainfall in soil at a rainfed site?

    Field Crop Res.

    (2014)
  • C.A. Liu et al.

    Maize yield and water balance is affected by nitrogen application in a film-mulching ridge–furrow system in a semiarid region of China

    Eur. J. Agron.

    (2014)
  • T. Liu et al.

    Ridge and furrow planting pattern optimizes canopy structure of summer maize and obtains higher grain yield

    Field Crop Res.

    (2018)
  • F. Mo et al.

    Ridge-furrow mulching system in semiarid Kenya: a promising solution to improve soil water availability and maize productivity

    Eur. J. Agron.

    (2016)
  • E.L. Ng et al.

    An overview of microplastic and nano plastic pollution in agroecosystems

    Sci. Total Environ.

    (2018)
  • X. Qin et al.

    Ridge-furrow mulching with black plastic film improves maize yield more than white plastic film in dry areas with adequate accumulated temperature

    Agr Forest Meteorol.

    (2018)
  • H. Wang et al.

    Maize–faba bean rotation under double ridge and furrows with plastic mulching alleviates soil water depletion

    Agric. Water Manage.

    (2018)
  • Y. Wang et al.

    Meta-analysis of no-tillage effect on wheat and maize water use efficiency in China

    Sci. Total Environ.

    (2018)
  • Y. Wu et al.

    Effects of ridge and furrow rainwater harvesting system combined with irrigation on improving water use efficiency of maize (Zea mays L.) in semi-humid area of China

    Agric. Water Manage.

    (2015)
  • J. Wu et al.

    Ridge-furrow cropping of maize reduces soil carbon emissions and enhances carbon use efficiency

    Agr. Ecosyst. Environ.

    (2018)
  • Y. Yu et al.

    Temporal niche differentiation increases the land equivalent ratio of annual intercrops: a meta-analysis

    Field Crop Res.

    (2015)
  • Y.Y. Yu et al.

    Benefits and limitations to straw- and plastic-film mulch on maize yield and water use efficiency: a meta-analysis across hydrothermal gradients

    Eur. J. Agron.

    (2018)
  • Cited by (25)

    • Continuous maize cultivation with high nitrogen fertilizers associated with the formation of dried soil layers in the semiarid farmland on the Loess Plateau

      2022, Journal of Hydrology
      Citation Excerpt :

      Maize plantations have been significantly increased in the western semiarid farmlands on the Loess Plateau after adopting double ridges and furrows mulching with plastic film (DRFM) technique in the past decade (Gan et al., 2013; Li et al., 2020a; Xie et al., 2020). DRFM has increased maize grain production and water use efficiency (WUE) by 800% compared to non-plastic mulching (Li et al., 2020a; Wang et al., 2020). The water consumption of maize is high compared to other crops, such as spring wheat, pea, and faba bean.

    • Comparing spatial and temporal variability of the system Water Use Efficiency in a Lower Mississippi River watershed

      2022, Journal of Hydrology: Regional Studies
      Citation Excerpt :

      For example, irrigation was kept at its modest level and planting/ harvesting dates remained similar. The comparison of WUE values with other published values is facilitated by multiple, recent meta-analyses (e.g., Hatfield et al., 2001; Mbava et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2020; Zheng et al., 2020). Measurements of WUE for corn range from 2 to 40 kg/ha/mm in 10 different countries with a large Coefficient of Variation, CV = 0.38 (Zwart and Bastiaanssen, 2004).

    View all citing articles on Scopus
    View full text