Soil water consumption, water use efficiency and winter wheat production in response to nitrogen fertilizer and tillage

Shahbaz Khan; Sumera Anwar; Yu Shaobo; Zhiqiang Gao; Min Sun; M Yasin Ashraf; Aixia Ren; Zhenping Yang

doi:10.7717/peerj.8892

Soil water consumption, water use efficiency and winter wheat production in response to nitrogen fertilizer and tillage

PeerJ. 2020 Apr 30:8:e8892. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8892. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Shahbaz Khan¹, Sumera Anwar², Yu Shaobo¹, Zhiqiang Gao¹, Min Sun¹, M Yasin Ashraf², Aixia Ren¹, Zhenping Yang¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Agriculture, Shanxi Agricultural University, Taigu, Shanxi, China.
² Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, The University of Lahore, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan.

Abstract

Sustainability of winter wheat yield under dryland conditions depends on improving soil water stored during fallow and its efficient use. A 3-year field experiment was conducted in Loess Plateau to access the effect of tillage and N (nitrogen) rates on soil water, N distribution and water- and nitrogen-use efficiency of winter wheat. Deep tillage (DT, 25-30 cm depth) and no-tillage (NT) were operated during fallow season, whereas four N rates (0, 90, 150 and 210 kg ha^-1) were applied before sowing. Rates of N and variable rainfall during summer fallow period led to the difference of soil water storage. Soil water storage at anthesis and maturity was decreased with increasing N rate especially in the year with high precipitation (2014-2015). DT has increased the soil water storage at sowing, N content, numbers of spike, grain number, 1,000 grain weight, grain yield, and water and N use efficiency as compared to NT. Grain yield was significantly and positively related to soil water consumption at sowing to anthesis and anthesis to maturity, total plant N, and water-use efficiency. Our study implies that optimum N rate and deep tillage during the fallow season could improve dryland wheat production by balancing the water consumption and biomass production.

Keywords: Biomass; Bulk density; Grain yield; Loess plateau; Nitrogen use efficiency; Protein yield; Soil water content; Tillage practices; Triticum aestivum L.; WUE.

Grants and funding

This work was jointly supported by scientific research programs by the Modern Agriculture Industry Technology System Construction (CARS-03-01-24), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2018YFD020040105), the Natural Science Foundation of China, (31771727), the Sanjin Scholar Support Special Funds Projects, Research Project supported by Shanxi Scholarship Council of China (2017-068), the Crop Ecology and Dry Cultivation Physiology Key Laboratory of Shanxi Province (201705D111007), the Shanxi Science and Technology Innovation Team Project (201605D131041), and the Shanxi Collaborative Innovation Center with Featured Crops High-quality and Efficiency Production in Loess Plateau. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.