Farming practices and deficit irrigation management improve winter wheat crop water productivity and biomass through mitigated greenhouse gas intensity under semi-arid regions

Author(s):  
Shahzad Ali ◽  
Yueyue Xu ◽  
Xiangcheng Ma ◽  
Qianmin Jia ◽  
Zhikuan Jia
Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 756
Author(s):  
AbdAllah M. El-Sanatawy ◽  
Ahmed S. M. El-Kholy ◽  
Mohamed M. A. Ali ◽  
Mohamed F. Awad ◽  
Elsayed Mansour

Water shortage is a major environmental stress that destructively impacts maize production, particularly in arid regions. Therefore, improving irrigation management and increasing productivity per unit of water applied are needed, especially under the rising temperature and precipitation fluctuations induced by climate change. Laboratory and field trials were carried out in the present study, which were aimed at assessing the possibility of promoting maize germination, growth, grain yield and crop water productivity (CWP) using seed priming under different irrigation regimes. Two seed priming treatments, i.e., hydro-priming and hardening versus unprimed seeds, were applied under four irrigation regimes, i.e., 120, 100, 80 and 60% of estimated crop evapotranspiration (ETc). The obtained results indicated that increasing irrigation water from 100% up to 120% ETc did not significantly increase grain yield or contributing traits, while it decreased CWP. Deficit irrigation of 80 and 60% ETc gradually decreased grain yield and all attributed traits. Seed priming significantly ameliorated seedlings’ vigor as indicated by earlier germination, higher germination percentage, longer roots and shoots, and heavier fresh and dry weight than unprimed seeds with the superiority of hardening treatment. Additionally, under field conditions, seed priming significantly increased grain yield, yield contributing traits and CWP compared with unprimed treatment. Interestingly, the results reflect the role of seed priming, particularly hardening, in mitigating negative impacts of drought stress and enhancing maize growth, grain yield and attributed traits as well as CWP under deficit irrigation conditions. This was demonstrated by a significant increase in grain yield and CWP under moderate drought and severe drought conditions compared with unprimed treatment. These results highlight that efficient irrigation management and seed priming can increase maize yield and water productivity in arid environments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-43
Author(s):  
Gary W. Marek ◽  
Thomas H. Marek ◽  
Steven R. Evett ◽  
Yong Chen ◽  
Kevin R. Heflin ◽  
...  

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Poolad Karimi ◽  
Bhembe Bongani ◽  
Megan Blatchford ◽  
Charlotte de Fraiture

Remote sensing techniques have been shown, in several studies, to be an extremely effective tool for assessing the performance of irrigated areas at various scales and diverse climatic regions across the world. Open access, ready-made, global ET products were utilized in this first-ever-countrywide irrigation performance assessment study. The study aimed at identifying ‘bright spots’, the highest performing sugarcane growers, and ‘hot spots’, or low performing sugarcane growers. Four remote sensing-derived irrigation performance indicators were applied to over 302 sugarcane growers; equity, adequacy, reliability and crop water productivity. The growers were segmented according to: (i) land holding size or grower scale (ii) management regime, (iii) location of the irrigation schemes and (iv) irrigation method. Five growing seasons, from June 2005 to October 2009, were investigated. The results show while the equity of water distribution is high across all management regimes and locations, adequacy and reliability of water needs improvement in several locations. Given the fact that, in general, water supply was not constrained during the study period, the observed issues with adequacy and reliability of irrigation in some of the schemes were mostly due to poor scheme and farm level water management practices. Sugarcane crop water productivity showed the highest variation among all the indicators, with Estate managed schemes having the highest CWP at 1.57 kg/m3 and the individual growers recording the lowest CWP at 1.14 kg/m3, nearly 30% less. Similarly center pivot systems showed to have the highest CWP at 1.63 kg/m3, which was 30% higher than the CWP in furrow systems. This study showcases the applicability of publicly available global remote sensing products for assessing performance of the irrigated crops at the local level in several aspects.


2021 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 12309
Author(s):  
Mihai BERCA ◽  
Valentina-Ofelia ROBESCU ◽  
Roxana HOROIAS

Researches on winter wheat in the south part of Romanian Plain during the dry years 2019 and 2020 have been focused on the crop water consumption issue in excessive conditions of air and soil drought. The wheat crop water consumption in the research sites (Calarasi and Teleorman counties), for the entire vegetation period, autumn – spring – summer, is between 1000 and 1050 m3 of water for each ton of wheat produced. Only in the spring-summer period, the wheat extracts a quantity of about 5960 m3 ha-1, i.e. 851 m3 t-1. The useful water reserve is normally located at about 1500 m3/ha-1, at a soil depth of 0-150 cm. In the spring of 2020, it has been below 400 m3 ha-1, so that at the beginning of May the soil moisture had almost reached the wilting coefficient (WC). Wheat plants have been able to survive the thermal and water shock of late spring - early summer, due to enhanced thermal alternation between air and soil. For a period of about 34 days, this alternation brought the plants 1-1.5 mm water, i.e. approximately 442 m3 ha-1, which allowed the prolongation of the plant’s agony until the rains of the second half of May. Yields have been, depending on the variety, between 1500 and 3000 kg ha-1, in average, covering only 60% of the crop costs. Other measures to save water in the soil have also been proposed in the paper.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Sisay Ambachew Mekonnen ◽  
Assefa Sintayehu

Sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) is the leading oil seed crop produced in Ethiopia. It is the second most important agricultural commodity for export market in the country. It is well suited as an alternative crop production system, and it has low crop water requirement with moderate resistance to soil moisture deficit. The low land of North Western Ethiopia is the major sesame producer in the country, and the entire production is from rainfed. The rainfall distribution in North Western Ethiopia is significantly varied. This significant rainfall variability hampers the productivity of sesame. Irrigation agriculture has the potential to stabilize crop production and mitigate the negative impacts of variable rainfall. This study was proposed to identify critical growth stages during which sesame is most vulnerable to soil moisture deficit and to evaluate the crop water productivity of sesame under deficit irrigation. The performance of sesame to stage-wise and uniform deficit irrigation scheduling technique was tested at Gondar Agricultural Research Center (Metema Station), Northern Western Ethiopia. Eight treatments, four stage-wise deficit, two uniform deficit, one above optimal, and one optimal irrigation applications, were evaluated during the 2017 irrigation season. The experiment was designed as a randomized complete block design with three replications. Plant phenological variables, grain yield and crop water productivity, were used for performance evaluation. The result showed that deficit irrigation can be applied both throughout and at selected growth stages except the midseason stage. Imposing deficit during the midseason gave the lowest yield indicating the severe effect of water deficit during flowering and capsule initiation stages. When deficit irrigation is induced throughout, a 25% uniform deficit irrigation can give the highest crop water productivity with no or little yield reduction as compared with optimal irrigation. Implementing deficit irrigation scheduling technique will be beneficial for sesame production. Imposing 75% deficit at the initial, development, late season growth stages or 25% deficit irrigation throughout whole seasons will improve sesame crop water productivity.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document