Analysis on water requirement and water-saving amount of wheat and corn in typical regions of the North China Plain

Abstract

This paper studied the variation characters on wheat and corn water consumption and irrigation water-saving amount under different water conditions (ample irrigation level, farmers conventional irrigation level and optimizing irrigation level). The water use efficiency and water saving potential of optimizing treatment and farmers’ conventional irrigation treatment were analyzed respectively. The objective of this study was to provide theoretical supporting for popularization and application of optimizing irrigation measures. Crop water requirement under sufficient water supply was calculated by Penman equation. We obtained crop water consumption under conventional treatment and optimizing treatment by field experiment. The main results showed that the irrigation amount of wheat and corn was too much under farmers’ conventional irrigation level and basically satisfied their water requirement, therefore, the water-saving amount was smaller while water-saving potential was bigger compared with the optimizing irrigation treatment. The grain yield under optimizing irrigation treatment was improved or appreciably reduced compared with that under conventional irrigation treatment, while the water consumption and irrigation amount of optimizing irrigation treatment was lower, with a higher water use efficiency. Therefore, the optimizing irrigation treatment could achieve a stable yield and high water efficiency at the same time. Moreover, when the optimizing irrigation measure was adopted, the grain yield reached 5940 kg/hm², water-saving amount reached 91mm for winter wheat, and the grain yield reached 7743 kg/hm², with water-saving amount of 49 mm for summer corn in the piedmont region of Taihang Mount. The grain yield got 7710 kg/hm², with water-saving amount of 20 mm for winter wheat in Heilonggang Plain. Therefore, the water-saving amount in the piedmont region of Taihang Mountain was obviously higher than that in Heilonggang Plain. Thus, the piedmont region of Taihang Mountain in the North China Plain is viewed as the key district for water-saving.

Keywords

winter wheat / summer corn / water requirement / water-saving amount

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Scientific and Technological Supporting Scheme (No. 2007BAD69B09, No. 2011BAD29B01), China.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg