Research PaperCan ridge-furrow with film and straw mulching improve wheat-maize system productivity and maintain soil fertility on the Loess Plateau of China?
Introduction
The global population will reach nine billion by 2050, which implies that there will be a substantial increase in food production demand (Tilman et al., 2011). Therefore, farmers will have to produce greater crop yields from a limited and decreasing area of arable land (Fang, 2018). Water is one of the major limiting factors on crop yield and will become scarcer and more unevenly distributed across the world due to global climate change and the influence of human activity in the 21st century (Karthe et al., 2014). Therefore, to ensure food security, regions with different climate characteristics and different amounts and distributions of water resources need to find adaptive water-saving and yield-increasing agricultural practices.
The Loess Plateau, which is spread over approximately 64 million hectares, supports about 100 million people and is the major dryland farming area of China (Chen et al., 2015). Groundwater resources are sparse and deep, which means that most of the farmland on the Loess Plateau relies solely on rainfall (Li and Xiao, 1992). However, precipitation at many sites is only 200–400 mm per year and more than 60% of the rainfall falls between June and September in this region (Wang et al., 2012a, Wang et al., 2012b), and precipitation has declined at a rate of 1–2 mm per year over the last five decades (Wang, 2009). The limited and uneven distribution of water resources and high evaporation rates constrain agricultural development on the Loess Plateau. It has been reported that the two major local cereal crops, maize and wheat, have low yields (2500–3500 kg ha−1 and 1500–3000 kg ha−1, respectively) due to the imbalance between crop water requirements and water supply (Hu et al., 2009, Ye and Liu, 2012). The region has been exceedingly poor for a long time and farmers cannot satisfy the primary demand for grains made by the increasing population (Li, 1999). Therefore, agricultural practices that increase crop yields by reducing soil evaporation and improving rainwater use efficiency are urgently needed on the Loess Plateau.
Plastic film mulching (PM) can reduce soil evaporation, increase soil moisture and temperature, and improve crop yield and water use efficiency (WUE) (Li et al., 2013, Yaghi et al., 2013, Liu et al., 2015, Gu et al., 2019a). Therefore, it has been widely adopted on the Loess Plateau over the last few decades. Recently, ridge-furrow film mulching (RFFM), which combines PM and the ridge-furrow planting method, has become popular because it not only has the benefits of PM but also can efficiently collect and utilize rainwater compared with conventional flat planting without film mulching (Gan et al., 2013). However, the higher soil moisture and temperature under RFFM have led to a more rapid conversion of soil nutrients because RFFM improves the micro-ecological environment for microorganisms compared with flat planting without mulching (Gu et al., 2018a). For example, previous research has shown that soil organic carbon (SOC) decomposition was more rapid under RFFM, and this has led to increasing concern about the sustainability of the soil over the long-term when the RFFM method is used (Gan et al., 2013, Steinmetz et al., 2016). Therefore, it is particularly important to explore an optimal agricultural practice that, when combined with RFFM, can simultaneously improve crop productivity and maintain soil fertility on the Loess Plateau.
In recent years, straw mulching has also become widespread in winter wheat-summer maize double-cropping systems on the Loess Plateau due to the increased use of machinery and response to a ban on straw burning by the Chinese government (Dong et al., 2018). Straw mulching can reduce soil evaporation loss and keep the soil warmer in winter and cooler in summer (Chen et al., 2007). However, straw mulching has not always been shown to increase maize and wheat yields due to poor soil heat and moisture preservation effects (Taa et al., 2004, Gao et al., 2009). Nevertheless, straw mulching is seen as an effective practice that can provide soil organic matter, and greatly improve the SOC concentration (Dong et al., 2018). Therefore, we hypothesized that combining straw mulching and RFFM would concurrently improve crop productivity and maintain soil fertility in a winter wheat-summer maize double-cropping system. The overall objectives of this study were to 1) compare the effects of different film and straw mulching patterns on soil moisture, soil fertility, grain yield, and WUE in different meteorological years; and 2) determine which pattern can improve crop productivity and simultaneously maintain soil fertility in a winter wheat-summer maize double-cropping system on the Loess Plateau of China.
Section snippets
The simple description of the experimental site
The continuous winter wheat and summer maize field experiments were conducted from 2013 to 2016 at Shaanxi Experimental Center of Water Saving Irrigation (34°18′N, 108°24′E; 521 m a.s.l.) located in the southern part of the Loess Plateau, China. The area has a typical semiarid warm temperature and continental monsoon climate. The mean annual precipitation is about 560 mm, with 65% of the rain falling between June and September. The mean annual pan evaporation and air temperature are about
Rainfall and air temperature
The total precipitation during the winter wheat seasons of 2013–2014, 2014–2015, and 2015–2016 was 274.8, 239.4, and 153.8 mm, respectively, with rainfall anomalies of 28.6%, 12.0%, and −28.0%, which meant that the seasons were classified as partial wet, normal rainfall, and partial dry seasons, respectively (Fig. 2 and Table 2). In addition, more rainfall occurred between middle February and harvest during the winter wheat seasons of 2013–2014 and 2014–2015. The 2014 summer maize season was
Soil moisture and temperature
Water scarcity is a constant and growing problem on the Loess Plateau where rainfall is low and evaporation rates are high. More seriously, most of the rainfall is lower than 5 mm and cannot be absorbed and utilized by crops (Gu et al., 2017). It has been reported that only 25–30% of the rainfall can be absorbed and utilized by crops, and that more than 70% of the rainfall was wasted through evaporation and runoff (Wang et al., 2012a, Wang et al., 2012b). Mulching has been shown to be an
Conclusions
The RW, RS, RWS, and RBS can greatly improve soil moisture, shoot biomass, grain yield, and WUE in winter wheat and summer maize cropping system compared with CK. After three years, soil fertility indicators (SOC, TN, SMBC, SMBN, SDOC, and SDON contents) were higher in RWS and RBS than in RW, RS, and CK. Furthermore, RWS and RBS produced significantly higher grain yields and WUEs than RW and RS. Therefore, RWS or RBS can be recommended as a promising agricultural practice that simultaneously
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
This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51979235, 51909221), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Nos. 2020T130541, 2019M650277), the Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (No. 2020JQ-276), and the Integrated Extension Project of Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation in Shaanxi Province (SXNYLSYF2019-01). We are especially grateful to the reviewers and editors for appraising our manuscript and offering instructive
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