Impact of Irrigation Schedule on Water Use Efficiency and Yield of Summer Maize

CHEN Jinping; WANG Hezhou; LIU Anneng; DING Dawei

doi:10.13522/j.cnki.ggps.2017.07.002

Abstract：Irrigation is essential to sustain agricultural production in Huang-Huai-Hai Plain of China. This paper presents the results of a two-year experiment conducted from 2013 to 2014 in Shangqiu of Henan Province in at-tempts to investigate how different irrigation schedules impact water consumption, yield and water use efficiency of summer maize. In the experiment, we measured the harvesting ears, ear grain number, 100-grain weight and row grain number. Five irrigation schedules were examined:irrigating 45 mm water at seedling stage+60 mm at jointing stage+60 mm at filling stage+45 mm at ripening stage (T1), irrigating 45 mm at seedling stage+60 mm at jointing stage+60 mm at filling stage (T2), 60 mm at jointing stage+60 mm at filling stage (T3), 60 mm at joint-ing stage (T4), and 60 mm at filling stage (T5). The results showed that the water consumption under irrigation at different stages was significantly higher than that without irrigation (P<0.05). The total water consumption in-creased significantly with the increase infrequency and amount of irrigation. The total water consumption with ir-rigations at jointing and filling stages (T3) was significantly less than that with irrigation at seedling, jointing, fill-ing and ripening stages (T1) in both 2013 and 2014, with their associated yield decreasing by 8％and 8.9％and water use efficiency increasing by 5.3％and 0.5％respectively. The harvesting ears under T1 and T2 were both improved significantly compared with other treatments. Compared with T4 and T5, T3 significantly increased the grain number and 100-grain weight, while has insignificant impact on harvesting ears. Irrigating at jointing and filling stages appears to be the most efficient schedule to improve yield and water use efficiency of the summer maize in Huang-Huai-Hai Plain.