Increasing seedling number alleviates the adverse effects of warming on grain yield and reduces greenhouse gas emission in late-season rice

Abstract

To address the adverse effects of warming on late-season rice, we investigated the impact of increasing the number of seedlings on rice yield, quality, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions under canopy warming conditions using the free-air temperature increase (FATI) system. Three treatments were implemented: ambient temperature with two seedlings hill^-1 (CKS1), canopy warming with two seedlings hill^-1 (WS1), and canopy warming with four seedlings hill^-1 (WS2). FATI increased rice canopy temperature and soil temperature by an average of 1.9-2.2°C and 0.6-0.8°C, respectively, over the two years. The yield in WS1 was significantly reduced by 10.1%-12.1% compared with CKS1, which was attributed to a significant decrease in total spikelets m^-2 and spikelets panicle^-1, despite a notable increase in filled grains in 2023. However, WS2 demonstrated no significant change in yield compared with CKS1. Analysis of yield components revealed that WS2 exhibited significantly higher panicles m^-2 than CKS1, while the spikelets panicle^-1 were significantly lower than CKS1. No significant changes were observed in grain weight and processing and appearance qualities. Compared with that under CKS1, CH₄ was significantly reduced under WS2 treatment in both years, and the global warming potential (GWP) and GHG intensity (GHGI) showed a decrease, with notable differences observed in 2022. Therefore, increasing the number of seedlings hill^-1 can alleviate the negative impacts of canopy warming on grain yield and reduce GHG emissions in late-season rice.

Keywords

FATI / Grain yield / Greenhouse gas emissions / Late-season rice / Seedling number

Abbreviations

FATI free-air temperature increase

GHG greenhouse gas

GHGI greenhouse gas intensity

GWP global warming potential

Availability of data and materials

Data will be shared upon request by the readers.

Authors’ contributions

R.X.: writing, reviewing, and editing; L.W.: data curation; X.B.: data analysis; B.Z. and L.C.: methodology; and T.Y.: writing, reviewing, and editing.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Acknowledgements

The study was funded by the Agriculture Research System of Shanghai, China (Grant No. 202403), the Guangzhou Science and Technology Plan Project (2023A04J0807), National Natural Science Foundation of China (32201900), and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2022A1515011279).

Appendix A. Supplementary data

Supplementary data to this article can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.crope.2024.12.001.

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