| The effects of mulching and deficit irrigation on growth, evapotranspiration and yield of mountain apple trees |
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| DOI：10.7606/j.issn.1000-7601.2020.04.07 |
| Key Words: apple tree mulching deficit irrigation evapotranspiration soil temperature yield water use efficiency |
| Author Name | Affiliation | | LIAO Yang | College of Water Conservancy and Architectural Engineering, Northwest A＆F University, Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid and Semiarid Areas of Ministry of Education, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China | | CAO Hongxia | College of Water Conservancy and Architectural Engineering, Northwest A＆F University, Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid and Semiarid Areas of Ministry of Education, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China | | LIU Xing | College of Water Conservancy and Architectural Engineering, Northwest A＆F University, Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid and Semiarid Areas of Ministry of Education, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China | | XUE Wenkai | College of Water Conservancy and Architectural Engineering, Northwest A＆F University, Key Laboratory of Agricultural Soil and Water Engineering in Arid and Semiarid Areas of Ministry of Education, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China |
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| Abstract: |
| In order to alleviate the contradiction between water supply and consumption of apple industry and improve the water use efficiency (WUE) of mountainous apple orchard on the Loess Plateau of Northern Shaanxi Province, the effects of mulching and deficit irrigation on evapotranspiration, soil temperature, apple yield, and WUE were studied by a field experiment. The experiment was conducted from 2018 to 2019, which included three mulching methods: horticultural fabric mulching (FM), corn straw mulching (SM), and clear tillage treatment with non\|mulched (TL), and three irrigation strategies of full irrigation (W1), moderate (W2), and severe (W3) deficit irrigation. Results showed that the mulching effectively improved the growth of apple trees, and SM was better than FM. In two years, the shoot length of FM and SM increased by 12.19% and 17.76%, respectively, compared with TL, and the stem diameter of new shoots increased by 17.21% and 21.33%, respectively. Deficit irrigation had no significant effect on shoot length, but increased shoot diameter and the average stem diameter of TLW1 was 3.8%、14.1% and 19.5% higher than that of TLW2、TLW3 and CK. SM significantly reduced and stabilized the soil temperature during the whole growth season, in 2018-2019, SM reduced soil temperature by 0.77~6.30℃, while the FM had no significant effect on soil temperature. The evapotranspiration of various stages on apple trees was in the following descending order: fruit expansion stage (III), bud development and flowering stage (I), leaf expansion stage (II), and fruit maturing stage (IV). Evapotranspiration in stage III accounted for 44% to 47% of the total in the whole growth period, which was much higher than that in the other three growth stages. Compared with W1, W2, and W3 decreased evapotranspiration on average by 5.6% and 10.7%, respectively. The evapotranspiration under mulching treatments was 23.41~36.80 mm lower than that of TL. Both FM and SM significantly increased apple yield, and no significant difference was found between them. The average yield of FM and SM was 24.8% and 25.9% higher than that of TL. Under mulching, different deficit irrigation didn’t cause significant difference in apple yield due to the higher soil water storage. While under TL treatments, apple yield decreased gradually with increasing water deficit, and the yield of TLW1 was significantly higher than that of TLW3 in 2019, and the increase range was 18.3%. In the past two years, FM and SM increased 30.7% and 35.1% of WUE compared with TL. Taken together, SM and FM had the potential to increase apple yield on the Loess Plateau by improving soil micro\|environment and regulating the growth of apple trees. |
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