Does root pruning increase yield and water-use efficiency of winter wheat?
Yan Fang A B C , Bingcheng Xu A B , Neil C. Turner D and Fengmin Li A B E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations
A State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Farming on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Water Resources, Yangling Shaanxi 712100, China.
B MOE Key Laboratory of Arid and Grassland Ecology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China.
C Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China.
D Centre for Legumes in Mediterranean Agriculture, M080, and UWA Institute of Agriculture, M082, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009, Australia.
E Corresponding author. Email: fmli@lzu.edu.cn
Crop and Pasture Science 61(11) 899-910 https://doi.org/10.1071/CP10125
Submitted: 9 April 2010 Accepted: 6 September 2010 Published: 4 November 2010
Abstract
A pot and a field experiment were conducted to assess whether seeding density in winter wheat affects grain yield and water-use efficiency when combined with root pruning. Both experiments compared four treatments, namely (i) low (normal) plant density with no root pruning; (ii) low plant density with root pruning; (iii) high plant density (25% higher than low density) with no root pruning; and (iv) high plant density with root pruning. Roots to a depth of 25 cm were cut back to keep their length to 13 cm and to limit their lateral spread to 13 cm from the plant. In the pot experiment, two water regimes were employed from stem elongation: (i) plants maintained at 85% field capacity, and (ii) plants maintained at 55% field capacity by regular watering. Low rainfall in spring at the terminal stage of plant growth served as natural water stress in the field experiment. In the field, the higher plant density induced higher root biomass at all sample depths at anthesis. Root pruning significantly decreased the root biomass in the upper soil layer (0–40 cm) and increased the root biomass in the deep soil layer (80–120 cm). When water was limited, increasing the seeding density by 25% reduced the grain yield, but with adequate water increasing the seeding density increased the grain yield. Root pruning increased the grain yield, but there was no interaction between seeding density and root pruning on grain yield in either the pots or field. Root pruning reduced water use between stem elongation and anthesis which led to more available soil water in the field between anthesis and maturity, and increased the rate of flag leaf photosynthesis at anthesis, whereas the reverse was true of increasing seeding density. Measurements of chlorophyll fluorescence suggested that initially root pruning induced a stress in the plants, but that the pruned plants rapidly recovered so that by anthesis and during grain filling the level of stress was reduced. Increasing the seeding density increased the number of spikes (fertile tillers), but decreased the grain yield per spike and had no effect on the thousand-kernel weight. In contrast, root pruning reduced the number of spikes in both the field and pots, but increased the grain yield per spike and thousand-kernel weight. Under our experimental conditions, restricting the root size by root pruning increased the yield and water-use efficiency of winter wheat in water-limited environments.
Additional keywords: chlorophyll fluorescence, grain yield, photosynthetic rate, root system size, Triticum aestivum, water-use efficiency.
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