IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/agiwat/v161y2015icp77-85.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Water use and crop coefficient of the wheat–maize strip intercropping system for an arid region in northwestern China

Author

Listed:
  • Wang, Zikui
  • Wu, Pute
  • Zhao, Xining
  • Gao, Ying
  • Chen, Xiaoli

Abstract

Relay strip intercropping of spring wheat and maize is practiced on a large scale in arid regions of northwestern China. In this study, a field experiment was carried out during 2012 and 2013 growing seasons to examine water use and crop coefficient of this system in an arid environment. The experiment comprised three treatments: sole-cropped wheat, sole-cropped maize, and wheat–maize intercropping. The grain yields of both intercropped wheat and maize were enhanced by intercropping. The gross economic profit for wheat–maize intercropping was 16.4% lower than that of sole maize and 95.4% higher than that of sole wheat. The overall land use efficiency was improved by intercropping. The time course of leaf area index in intercropping had the similar trends to those in sole crops with relatively low values, which never exceeded 3.0m2m−2 throughout both growing seasons. Compared to weighted means of the sole-cropping systems, wheat–maize intercropping used 26% and 24% more water in 2012 and 2013, respectively. The water-use efficiency of intercropping was nearly the same as the weighted means of the sole crops. Due to the incomplete groundcover in intercropping plots, more water was consumed as soil evaporation. Averaged over two seasons, the ratio of soil evaporation to actual evapotranspiration was 33.4, 20.7 and 24.1% for intercropping system, sole-cropped wheat and sole-cropped maize, respectively. Crop coefficient (Kc) of sole-cropped wheat was 0.19±0.02, 1.05±0.07, and 0.42±0.09 at the initial, mid and late season in two seasons, respectively. Kc value of the sole-cropped maize was 0.22±0.03, 1.10±0.06 and 0.60±0.02 at the initial, mid and late season, respectively. The Kc values of the wheat–maize intercropping system varied in 0.21±0.03, 0.89±0.05, and 0.78±0.06 at the initial, middle and late wheat growing season, and in 0.85±0.03 and 0.61±0.01 at the middle and late maize growing season, respectively. Therefore, longer growing season and incomplete ground cover are the main factors that resulted in higher water use for wheat–maize intercropping compared to sole crops. Results of this study can help to improve the irrigation efficiency for the wheat–maize strip intercropping system.

Suggested Citation

  • Wang, Zikui & Wu, Pute & Zhao, Xining & Gao, Ying & Chen, Xiaoli, 2015. "Water use and crop coefficient of the wheat–maize strip intercropping system for an arid region in northwestern China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 77-85.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:161:y:2015:i:c:p:77-85
    DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2015.07.012
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378377415300585
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.agwat.2015.07.012?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kar, Gouranga & Kumar, Ashwani & Martha, M., 2007. "Water use efficiency and crop coefficients of dry season oilseed crops," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(1), pages 73-82, January.
    2. Xu, Xu & Huang, Guanhua & Qu, Zhongyi & Pereira, Luis S., 2010. "Assessing the groundwater dynamics and impacts of water saving in the Hetao Irrigation District, Yellow River basin," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 98(2), pages 301-313, December.
    3. Daamen, Carl C. & Simmonds, L. P. & Sivakumar, M. V. K., 1995. "The impact of sparse millet crops on evaporation from soil in semi-arid Niger," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 27(3-4), pages 225-242, July.
    4. Zhao, Wenzhi & Liu, Bing & Zhang, Zhihui, 2010. "Water requirements of maize in the middle Heihe River basin, China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 215-223, February.
    5. Grema, A. K. & Hess, T. M., 1994. "Water balance and water use of pearl millet-cowpea intercrops in north east Nigeria," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 169-185, November.
    6. Kang, Shaozhong & Gu, Binjie & Du, Taisheng & Zhang, Jianhua, 2003. "Crop coefficient and ratio of transpiration to evapotranspiration of winter wheat and maize in a semi-humid region," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 59(3), pages 239-254, April.
    7. Willey, R. W., 1990. "Resource use in intercropping systems," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 17(1-3), pages 215-231, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Liu, Haijun & Wang, Xuming & Zhang, Xian & Zhang, Liwei & Li, Yan & Huang, Guanhua, 2017. "Evaluation on the responses of maize (Zea mays L.) growth, yield and water use efficiency to drip irrigation water under mulch condition in the Hetao irrigation District of China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 144-157.
    2. Guodong Chen & Yunlong Zhai & Jianguo Zhou & Yanfang Li & Jiao Lin & Sumei Wan & Quanzhong Wu, 2022. "Optimizing Maize Belt Width Enhances Productivity in Wheat/Maize Intercropping Systems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-16, December.
    3. Zhou, Lifeng & Feng, Hao & Zhao, Ying & Qi, Zhijuan & Zhang, Tibin & He, Jianqiang & Dyck, Miles, 2017. "Drip irrigation lateral spacing and mulching affects the wetting pattern, shoot-root regulation, and yield of maize in a sand-layered soil," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 114-123.
    4. Gong, Xiangwei & Dang, Ke & Liu, Long & Zhao, Guan & Lv, Siming & Tian, Lixin & Jin, Fei & Feng, Yu & Zhao, Yingnan & Feng, Baili, 2021. "Intercropping combined with nitrogen input promotes proso millet (Panicum miliaceum L.) growth and resource use efficiency to increase grain yield on the Loess plateau of China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 243(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Xu, Xu & Jiang, Yao & Liu, Minghuan & Huang, Quanzhong & Huang, Guanhua, 2019. "Modeling and assessing agro-hydrological processes and irrigation water saving in the middle Heihe River basin," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 211(C), pages 152-164.
    2. Ding, Risheng & Kang, Shaozhong & Zhang, Yanqun & Hao, Xinmei & Tong, Ling & Du, Taisheng, 2013. "Partitioning evapotranspiration into soil evaporation and transpiration using a modified dual crop coefficient model in irrigated maize field with ground-mulching," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 85-96.
    3. Wang, Yunfei & Cai, Huanjie & Yu, Lianyu & Peng, Xiongbiao & Xu, Jiatun & Wang, Xiaowen, 2020. "Evapotranspiration partitioning and crop coefficient of maize in dry semi-humid climate regime," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 236(C).
    4. Jiang, Yao & Xu, Xu & Huang, Quanzhong & Huo, Zailin & Huang, Guanhua, 2015. "Assessment of irrigation performance and water productivity in irrigated areas of the middle Heihe River basin using a distributed agro-hydrological model," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 67-81.
    5. Zhang, Yanqun & Wang, Jiandong & Gong, Shihong & Xu, Di & Sui, Juan & Wu, Zhongdong & Mo, Yan, 2018. "Effects of film mulching on evapotranspiration, yield and water use efficiency of a maize field with drip irrigation in Northeastern China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 205(C), pages 90-99.
    6. Hou, Lizhu & Wenninger, Jochen & Shen, Jiangen & Zhou, Yangxiao & Bao, Han & Liu, Haijun, 2014. "Assessing crop coefficients for Zea mays in the semi-arid Hailiutu River catchment, northwest China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 140(C), pages 37-47.
    7. Ding, Risheng & Kang, Shaozhong & Vargas, Rodrigo & Zhang, Yanqun & Hao, Xinmei, 2013. "Multiscale spectral analysis of temporal variability in evapotranspiration over irrigated cropland in an arid region," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 79-89.
    8. Feng, Yu & Gong, Daozhi & Mei, Xurong & Hao, Weiping & Tang, Dahua & Cui, Ningbo, 2017. "Energy balance and partitioning in partial plastic mulched and non-mulched maize fields on the Loess Plateau of China," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 191(C), pages 193-206.
    9. Cao, Zhaodan & Zhu, Tingju & Cai, Ximing, 2023. "Hydro-agro-economic optimization for irrigated farming in an arid region: The Hetao Irrigation District, Inner Mongolia," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 277(C).
    10. Wu, Zhangsheng & Li, Yue & Wang, Rong & Xu, Xu & Ren, Dongyang & Huang, Quanzhong & Xiong, Yunwu & Huang, Guanhua, 2023. "Evaluation of irrigation water saving and salinity control practices of maize and sunflower in the upper Yellow River basin with an agro-hydrological model based method," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 278(C).
    11. Singh, Sukhbir & Angadi, Sangamesh V. & Grover, Kulbhushan K. & Hilaire, Rolston St. & Begna, Sultan, 2016. "Effect of growth stage based irrigation on soil water extraction and water use efficiency of spring safflower cultivars," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 432-439.
    12. Yousef Joshan & Behzad Sani & Hamid Jabbari & Hamid Mozafari & Payam Moaveni, 2019. "Effect of drought stress on oil content and fatty acids composition of some safflower genotypes," Plant, Soil and Environment, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 65(11), pages 563-567.
    13. Gao, Yang & Yang, Linlin & Shen, Xiaojun & Li, Xinqiang & Sun, Jingsheng & Duan, Aiwang & Wu, Laosheng, 2014. "Winter wheat with subsurface drip irrigation (SDI): Crop coefficients, water-use estimates, and effects of SDI on grain yield and water use efficiency," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 1-10.
    14. Santos, Reginaldo Ferreira & Bassegio, Doglas & de Almeida Silva, Marcelo, 2017. "Productivity and production components of safflower genotypes affected by irrigation at phenological stages," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 66-74.
    15. Istanbulluoglu, Ahmet, 2009. "Effects of irrigation regimes on yield and water productivity of safflower (Carthamus tinctorius L.) under Mediterranean climatic conditions," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 96(12), pages 1792-1798, December.
    16. Fan, Yaqiong & Ding, Risheng & Kang, Shaozhong & Hao, Xinmei & Du, Taisheng & Tong, Ling & Li, Sien, 2017. "Plastic mulch decreases available energy and evapotranspiration and improves yield and water use efficiency in an irrigated maize cropland," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 179(C), pages 122-131.
    17. Yi, Jun & Li, Huijie & Zhao, Ying & Shao, Ming'an & Zhang, Hailin & Liu, Muxing, 2022. "Assessing soil water balance to optimize irrigation schedules of flood-irrigated maize fields with different cultivation histories in the arid region," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    18. Zhao, Nana & Liu, Yu & Cai, Jiabing & Paredes, Paula & Rosa, Ricardo D. & Pereira, Luis S., 2013. "Dual crop coefficient modelling applied to the winter wheat–summer maize crop sequence in North China Plain: Basal crop coefficients and soil evaporation component," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 93-105.
    19. Gong, Daozhi & Mei, Xurong & Hao, Weiping & Wang, Hanbo & Caylor, Kelly K., 2017. "Comparison of ET partitioning and crop coefficients between partial plastic mulched and non-mulched maize fields," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 181(C), pages 23-34.
    20. Choudhury, B.U. & Singh, Anil Kumar & Pradhan, S., 2013. "Estimation of crop coefficients of dry-seeded irrigated rice–wheat rotation on raised beds by field water balance method in the Indo-Gangetic plains, India," Agricultural Water Management, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 20-31.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:161:y:2015:i:c:p:77-85. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/agwat .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.