Ridge-furrow with full plastic film mulching improves water use efficiency and tuber yields of potato in a semiarid rainfed ecosystem
Graphical abstract
The two years field study assessed potato responses to various ridge-furrow plastic film mulching planting patterns in a rain-fed region. It showed that full mulching on the ridges and furrows (or the large and small ridges) increased both tuber yields and rain WUE, respectively, by over 70%. The full mulched ridges and furrows kept the topsoil warmer and wetter, decreased ET during the early growing season, thus enhanced the percentage of emergence and ensured faster development of seed tubers after planting. The full mulching extended the growth period from seedling to maturation, and enhanced plant height, LAI, R/S ratio and economic benefits of potato.
Introduction
In the arid and semiarid regions, rare and unpredictable precipitation, high evaporation, and low rainwater use efficiency always constrain agricultural production and sustainable development (Beltrano et al., 1999, Boyer and Westgate, 2004), which severely limits crop yields and as an extreme, without any harvesting (Shan and Chen, 1993, Turner, 2004). These issues have become more serious with the global climate change and its significant impacts on agriculture (Turner, 2011).
Aimed to alleviate these issues, many management strategies have been tested to improve rainwater use efficiency in semiarid regions over the past decades (Boers and Ben-Asher, 1982, Beltrano et al., 1999, Xiao and Wang, 2003), like rainwater harvesting (Zhao et al., 1995, Mzirai and Tumbo, 2010), mulching including plastic, crop straw, gravel-sand cover, etc. (Wang et al., 2011a, Sarolia and Bhardwaj, 2012), drip or supplement irrigation (Lamont et al., 2003, Wang et al., 2011b, Anita and Giovanni, 2012), etc. These practices have become popular to a great extent, especially ridge-furrow system with plastic film mulching retains one of the most effective measures to improve water use efficiency and yields for regions where the irrigation is not available (Gan et al., 2013). Plastic film mulching has mainly been used in maize (Zegada-Lizarazu and Berliner, 2011), wheat (Li et al., 2004), cotton (Zhou et al., 2012) and potato (Kar, 2003, Wang et al., 2008, Zhao et al., 2012). Potato is a staple and economic crop in Chinese Loess Plateau, and the optimum configuration of ridge-furrow ratio (39–48 cm width ridge and 60 cm furrows alternating) has spread in potato planting in these areas (Wang et al., 2008).
The film mulching practice affects crop growth and development in various ways. It decreases the amount of water loss due to evaporation (Liakatas et al., 1986, Wang et al., 2008, Li et al., 2013), enhances soil water infiltration (Gan et al., 2013), distributes soil moisture again and therefore relieves water stress to some degree (Li et al., 2004, Chakraborty et al., 2008). Owing to many advantages, mulching improves crops yields both in quantity or quality (Kar, 2003, Li et al., 2004, Ramakrishna et al., 2006, Wang et al., 2008, Luis et al., 2011), and increases water use efficiency (Wang et al., 2008, Zegada-Lizarazu and Berliner, 2011). The ridge-furrow film mulching was effective in enhancing the topsoil temperature in the early growing season when temperatures are low in spring (Gan et al., 2013). The effect of film mulching on topsoil temperature gradually diminishes with plant development for some crop, especially in potato (Wang et al., 2005, Zhao et al., 2012). However, mulching for the whole growth duration can considerably lower the yields because of consistently higher temperatures in midsummer, and the plants easily suffer from the heat stress (Li et al., 2004, Zhao et al., 2012). Therefore, some measures must be applied, such as mulching soil surface with crop straw (Chakraborty et al., 2008), covering plastic film with the soil (Fan et al., 2012), or removing the mulch (Zhao et al., 2012).
Despite all the above, the mechanisms responsible for the improved water use efficiency remain unknown so far (Gan et al., 2013). Most work will still have to be done, we must focus on the influence mechanisms and relationships between mulching and soil micro-environment, biomass and yields, especially soil water storage and water use efficiency, and then find a more effective technique to adapt dry conditions. How to enhance rainwater use efficiency? It is the most critical issue in developing local potato industry under the climate change. We therefore conducted a field experiment to examine the influence of varying mulching areas and ridge-furrow shapes on growth, evapotranspiration, root/shoot ratio and rainwater use efficiency of potato. Specifically, the objectives of this field study were to (1) investigate the influence of varying mulching areas and shapes on soil water storage and evapotranspiration during the growing season, (2) assess the impacts of mulching areas and shapes on tuber bulking and water use efficiency, (3) compare the effectiveness of the two full mulching patterns (between double ridge-furrow and ridge-furrow) on enhancing soil temperature and soil water conservation, and (4) determine an appropriate film mulching mode for maximum water use efficiency and tuber yields in semiarid area.
Section snippets
Description of the experiment site
A field experiment was carried out in Dingxi Arid Meteorology and Ecological Environment Experimental Station of the Institute of Arid Meteorology of China Meteorological Administration (IAM, CMA) in 2009 and 2010. The location represents a typical semi-arid rain-fed agriculture area and has one harvest per year. Table 1 and Fig. 1 are the brief description of this experimental site.
Field experiment design
In this study, two shapes of ridge-furrow rainwater collecting systems and three mulching areas were tested for
Soil moisture
The total rainfall over the growing season (from sowing to harvest) was 245.5 mm in 2009 and 243.0 mm in 2010, much lower than the average of 309 mm for the corresponding period during the past 30 years (Fig. 1). Erratic rainfall occurred in 2009 with minimal amounts before July but plentiful after July, however there was similar rainwater before and after July in 2010. From early March to end of May (about two months before planting and one month after planting), there were total rainfall of 40.8
Discussion
Full mulching with plastic film on the ridge-furrow planting patterns improved tuber yields and WUE, with increased economic benefits. The benefit of film mulching became smaller with the decrease of mulching areas. The shapes of ridges and furrows had little effect on yields and WUE although DRFFM had higher value than RFFM. This was probably owing to the following reasons. Firstly, full film mulching ridge-furrow increased temperature–moisture of topsoil during the early growing season.
Conclusions
Under the conditions of scarce rainfall during the early growing season, full mulching with plastic film on the ridge-furrow was an advantaged technique for enhancing potato yields and WUE. The full mulched ridges and furrows kept the topsoil warmer and wetter, decreased ET during the early growing season, thus enhanced the percentage of emergence and ensured faster development of seed tubers after planting. The full mulching extended the growth period from seedling to maturation, and enhanced
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by National Basic Research Program of China (2012CB955304), Public Welfare (Weather) Special Research Project of the China Meteorological Administration (GYHY201106029), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41275118) and Arid Meteorology Research Fund (IAM201309). This was a joint contribution between Institute of Arid Meteorology of China Meteorological Administration and the Eastern Cereal and Oilseed Research Centre (ECORC) of Agriculture and Agri-Food
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