Effects of irrigation regimes on yield and quality of upland rice and paddy rice and their interaction with nitrogen rates

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.agwat.2020.106344Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Under bare-dry cultivation and medium nitrogen rate, upland rice and paddy rice can get the higher yield.

  • The appearance quality and nutrition quality of upland rice can be improved by bare-dry cultivation and medium and upper-middle nitrogen rate.

  • The effect of increasing nitrogen application on 1000-grain weight of upland rice and paddy rice is different.

  • Yield and the cooking and nutrition quality of upland rice were less sensitive to nitrogen than that of paddy rice.

Abstract

The study of water-nitrogen (N) interaction to improve crop drought resistance and reduce environmental pollution has increasingly become a hot topic. However, the response of yield and quality of paddy rice and upland rice to N nutrition under different irrigation regimes is little known. Continuous flooding cultivation (CF, control) and bare-dry cultivation (BD) were used to cultivate paddy rice cultivar Yangjing 687 (japonica) and upland rice cultivar Zhonghan 3 (japonica), and 3 N application rates, 140 (low N, LN), 210 (normal N, NN) and 280 kg ha−1(high N, HN), were set for each irrigation regime. The results showed that under BD and CF irrigation regimes, the yield of paddy rice was the highest at NN, while that of upland rice was the highest at BD with NN and at CF with HN, breakdown viscosity was the highest and setback viscosity was the lowest for paddy rice at LN and for upland rice at NN. Increasing N application, the chalky kernels percentage and the chalkiness of upland rice increased first and then decreased, while that of paddy rice decreased under BD and increased under CF. Compared with CF, BD made the seed setting percentage and 1000-grain weight of upland rice and paddy rice different, and improved the appearance and nutritional quality of upland rice. The correlation between the cooking and nutritional quality and leaf N content of upland rice was lower than that of paddy rice. These results suggest that the yield and cooking quality of upland rice were high under BD with NN, and the paddy rice yield was high under BD with NN or CF with NN.

Introduction

Rice (Oryza Sativa L.) is one of the most important food crops in the world and the most important staple food in Asia. With population growth and rapid economic development, increasing grain yield and improving grain quality has become a top priority in China (Zhang, 2007; Peng et al., 2009). Rice is also the main irrigation crop. The traditional submerged cultivation of paddy rice not only consumes a large amount of water and has a low water use efficiency, but also causes environmental pollution (Bouman and Tuong, 2001), for example, under continuous flooding conditions, paddy fields are the main source of CH4 emissions from farmland soils, accounting for about 15−20 % of the global total emissions (Yan et al., 2005).

Previous studies have shown that paddy rice has a certain amphibious type of water and drought, and has great potential for water saving (Bouman and Tuong, 2001; Belder et al., 2005). Upland rice has strong drought resistance and low water requirement, and is an ideal dry food crop (Marschner, 1978), especially suitable for cultivation in arid and hilly and low mountain areas. A large number of upland rice varieties have been cultivated by the International Rice Research Institute and other institutions. Chinese scientists have also developed a number of water-saving and drought-resistant upland rice varieties, especially in the breeding of Japonica upland rice varieties, which have reached the international advanced level, and their yield and quality are approaching those of paddy rice varieties (Bouman et al., 2006; Atlin et al., 2013). At present, more and more researchers pay attention to the research and application of paddy rice dry cultivation technology (Fan et al., 2005; Zhang et al., 2005, 2013; Sun et al., 2012; Mahmod et al., 2014; Yuan et al., 2014, 2017). Most studies have shown that water-saving cultivation could promote the growth and development of paddy rice, increase effective tillers and increase yield (Liang et al., 1999; Wang et al., 2016), while some studies show the opposite (Zhang et al., 2019). Alternating wetting and drying (AWD) technology has little effect on yield of paddy rice (Yang et al., 2007; Ye et al., 2013; Chu et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2016). Upland rice can be used as a substitute for partially submerged paddy rice cultivation in dry land, hillside land or low-lying areas where rainfall is stable but irrigation conditions are lacking (Tabbal et al., 2002; Kukal et al., 2005; Tuong et al., 2005).These measures not only play an active role in stabilizing and promoting food production, but also play an important role in improving the utilization rate of water resources, reducing a series of environmental problems caused by flooding paddy rice cultivation (Yang et al., 2007; Wang et al., 2016; Christy et al., 2018), and promoting the sustainable development of agriculture. As for the relationship between irrigation regimes and protein, previous studies have suggested that the protein content of brown rice is higher and the nutritional quality of brown rice is improved under dry cultivation conditions or when the soil moisture content is low, but the cooking quality of rice is affected (Chen et al., 2012; Cai et al., 2004).

In addition to water, nitrogen (N) is the most important element affecting crop growth and the most important nutrient limiting factor for crop yield formation. N application can significantly improve crop yield. Without the application of N fertilizer, the global food supply of 7 billion people can not be maintained and the food problem of nearly 1.4 billion people in China can not be solved. It is estimated that the application of N fertilizer feeds 48 % of the world's current population (Erisman et al., 2008). However, according to the survey, the apparent N utilization rate of rice in China in the past 10 years is only 39 % (Yu and Shi, 2015), and the average apparent N recovery rate in the world is only 33 % (Garnett et al., 2009). The low utilization rate of N fertilizer not only causes a huge waste of resources and financial resources, but also has a negative impact on the environment and the safety of agricultural products.

Water and nutrients and their interaction are important factors affecting crop yield and quality (Benbi, 1989). The research on the interaction of water and N to improve crop adaptation to drought stress has increasingly become the focus of nutritional physiological regulation, but the conclusions are different. Many studies have shown that appropriate N fertilizer can improve crop drought tolerance, improve fertilizer efficiency and water-saving and increase grain yield (Yang et al., 1996; Liu et al., 2013; Yang, 2015), but D.K., Bhan and Misra (1970) believe that increasing N fertilizer application under limited soil moisture may aggravate water stress and adversely affect crop yields. You et al. (2006) study showed that increasing N application significantly increased the crude protein content, chalky kernels rate and chalkiness of rice, and reduced the amylose content under the same irrigation mode, and water-saving irrigation significantly increased amylose content and chalkiness and reduced the crude protein content of rice at the same N level. But there are also studies suggested that different irrigation and fertilization treatments had no significant effect on amylose content of hybrid early rice, and had a significant effect on protein content (Cheng et al., 2001). As for the effects of irrigation regime (soil moisture), nitrogen application and their interaction on rice yield and quality, most of the previous studies used paddy rice as the test material, and the research conclusions are different. There are few comparative studies on the effects of irrigation regime, nitrogen application and interaction on the yield and quality of upland rice and paddy rice. It is hypothesized that the water and nitrogen management of upland rice and paddy rice are reasonably coordinated, the yield, quality, water use efficiency and nitrogen use efficiency of rice can be improved, and the sustainable development of agriculture can be promoted. However, the evidence is very scarce in this regard.

The objectives of this study were to investigate the differences of yield and quality between paddy rice and upland rice under the two irrigation regimes: bare dry-cultivation (BD) (belong to the AWD) and continuous flooding cultivaiton (CF, control), and 3 N application rates, 140 (low N, LN), 210 (normal N, NN) and 280 kg ha−1(high N, HN), were set for each irrigation regime. Yield and its components, earing rate, leaf N content, adventitious roots, the chlorophyll content (SPAD value) after anthesis, nutritional quality, appearance quality, and cooking and eating quality were determined, which were closely related to yield formation and grain quality. This study would provide guidance for fertilizer-saving, water-saving rice cultivation and sustainable agricultural development, and further understand the growth mechanism of rice under the interaction of water and N.

Section snippets

Plant materials and study site description

The experiment was conducted in the rice growing season (May-October) at the research farm of Yangzhou University, Jiangsu Province, China (32°30′N, 119°25′E) in 2016 and 2017. The paddy rice cultivar Yangjing 687 (japonica) and the upland rice cultivar Zhonghan 3 (japonica) were used as materials. The cultivated soil layer was sandy loam [Typic fluvaquents, Entisols (U.S. Taxonomy)] with available N-P-K at 108.2, 25.8 and 97.3 mg kg−1, respectively, organic matter 21.6 g kg-1, soil bulk density

Leaf water potentials

Fig. 2 shows the midday leaf water potential when the SWP was about −20 kPa (D) under BD and when the plants were rewatered (W). Leaf water potential under BD (−0.80 to −0.93 Mpa) was significantly lower than that under CF (−0.43 to −0.59 MPa) (Fig. 2-A, C, E, and G). Under the same irrigation regime, increasing N application, leaf water potential increased slightly, but there was no significant difference among the 3 N levels (Fig. 2-B, D, F, and H) when the plants were rewatered (W), and the

Discussion

With regard to the effect of N nutrition on rice yield under different soil moisture conditions, many studies have suggested that with the increase of N application, the yield would increase, and excessive N application resulted in a decrease in yield (Yang et al., 1996; Jiang et al., 2004; You et al., 2006; Fageria et al., 2011; Zhou et al., 2015; Zhu et al., 2017; Deng et al., 2018). In the present study, it was observed that under BD and CF irrigation regimes, the yield of paddy rice was the

Conclusions

Water and nutrients and their interaction are important factors affecting crop yield and quality. In the dry land and hillside with stable rainwater but lack of irrigation conditions, BD and NN can be used for the cultivation of upland rice, i.e. the crops are rewatered at the soil water potential of −20 kPa and total N application rate of 210 kg ha−1. In areas with more rainfall and convenient irrigation, BD and NN or CF and NN can be used for the cultivation of paddy rice.These two

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest to this work.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful for grants from The National Natural Science Foundation of China (31671617), the National Key Research and Development Program (2016YFD0300502; 2016YFD0300206; 2018YFD0301306), the Priority Academic Program Development of Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions (PAPD), and Yangzhou University Academic Science and Technology Innovation Funding Program supported this study.

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