PLANT DENSITY, IRRIGATION AND NITROGEN MANAGEMENT: THREE MAJOR PRACTICES IN CLOSING YIELD GAPS FOR AGRICULTURAL SUSTAINABILITY IN NORTH-WEST CHINA

Highlights

• A relative yield of 70% was obtained under both border and drip irrigation.

• Drip irrigation saved water and lowered yield variability compared to border irrigation.

• Drip irrigation led to accumulation of soil nitrogen and phosphorus in the root zone.

• Relative yield may increase 8% to 10% by optimizing field management.

• Plant density, irrigation and nitrogen are major factors closing yield gap in NW China.

Abstract

Agriculture faces the dual challenges of food security and environmental sustainability. Here, we investigate current maize production at the field scale, analyze the yield gaps and impacting factors, and recommend measures for sustainably closing yield gaps. An experiment was conducted on a 3.9-ha maize seed production field in arid north-western China, managed with border and drip irrigation, respectively, in 2015 and 2016. The relative yield reached 70% in both years. However, drip irrigation saved 227 mm irrigation water during a drier growing season compared with traditional border irrigation, accounting for 44% of the maize evapotranspiration (ET). Yield variability under drip irrigation was 12.1%, lower than the 18.8% under border irrigation. Boundary line analysis indicates that a relative yield increase of 8% to 10% might be obtained by optimizing the yield-limiting factors. Plant density and soil available water content and available nitrogen were the three major factors involved. In conclusion, closing yield gaps with agricultural sustainability may be realized by optimizing agronomic, irrigation and fertilizer management, using water-saving irrigation methods and using site-specific management.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

boundary line analysis / irrigation method / precision agriculture / spatial variability / yield gaps / yield-limiting factors

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Acknowledgements

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51725904, 51621061, 51861125103) and the Discipline Innovative Engineering Plan (111 Program, B14002). We thank Mr. Quan Lu (Shiyanghe Experimental Station, China Agricultural University, China) for field management. We are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editors for their work on this manuscript.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Xiuwei Guo, Manoj Kumar Shukla, Di Wu, Shichao Chen, Donghao Li, and Taisheng Du declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2020. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)