Available online at www.sciencedirect.

com

ProcediaProcedia
Engineering
00 (2011)
Engineering
28 000000
(2012) 33 42

Procedia
Engineering
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

2012 International Conference on Modern Hydraulic Engineering

Water use Efficiency and Physiological Responses of Oat

under Alternate Partial Root-zone Irrigation in the Semiarid
Areas of Northeast China
LIN Yechuna, ZENG Zhaohaia, REN Changzhongb, HU Yuegaoa, a*
a

College of Agronomy and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100193, China
b
Baicheng Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Baicheng City, Jilin 137000, China

Abstract
Water use efficiency (WUE) and some crop physiological responses were studied when oat (Avena nuda L.) was
applied with alternate partial root-zone irrigation (APRI). A field experiment was carried out with two organic
fertilizer levels (e.g. 0 and 240 kg hm-2) and three irrigation levels (i.e. 60, 90 and 120 mm). The irrigation methods
included the conventional irrigation (CI) and APRI. Compared with CI, APRI under the moderate water stress
reduced water consumption by 9.97-12.46%, and improved WUE by 0-9.09%, but the grain yield was slightly
reduced by 2.1-12.76%. APRI under the severe water stress would significantly (P<0.05) reduce the plant height than
CI. APRI with organic fertilizer could increase the root shoot ratio by 18.18-45.45% after the grain filling stage.
Under the severe water stress APRI significantly reduced the net photosynthetic rate (Pn), and these treatments with
organic fertilizer generally had much higher Pn than those without organic fertilizer. Our results indicate that APRI
under the moderate water stress improves WUE and root shoot ratio, and slightly reduce grain yield and Pn with
applied organic fertilizer.

2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Society for Resources,
2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Environment and Engineering Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license.
Keywords: Water use efficiency; Alternative irrigation; Organic fertilizer; Photosynthesis; Avena nuda

1. Introduction
Irrigated agriculture is the main consumer of the available water resources in the world. According to
FAO (2000), about 60% of total water resources all over the world are expended in agricultural irrigation.
* Corresponding author: HU Yuegao. Tel.:+86 10 62733847; fax: +86 10 62732441.
E-mail address: huyuegao@cau.edu.cn.

1877-7058 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Society for Resources, Environment and Engineering
Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. doi:10.1016/j.proeng.2012.01.679

34

LIN name
Yechun
et al. / Procedia
Engineering
28 000000
(2012) 33 42
Author
/ Procedia
Engineering
00 (2011)

In 2008, the total water consumption was 54 billion m3 in Northeast China; however, agriculture
consumed about 70% of it. Since the irrigated agriculture usually get much more crop yield than rainfed
does, Lascano et al.[1] indicated that the irrigated area should be increased by more than 20% and the
irrigated crop yield should be increased by 40% by 2025 to secure the food for 8 billion populations.
Therefore, it is critically important to improve the water use efficiency in agriculture.
On the other hand, the intensive cultivation resulted in decrease of soil organic matter (SOM) and
degradation of framing land quality, thus cropland showed poor capacity for water and nutrient
conservation[2]. Qiu et al.[3] reported that total soil organic carbon (SOC) storage in crop lands in
Northeast China was about 1243.48 106 t (0-30 cm soil layer); under the current cultivation systems,
SOC was in a negative balance with organic carbon losing at a high rate of 31.22 10 6 t and 2.05 t hm-2 a1
. This situation was more severe in Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces. Soil in paddy fields and vegetable
fields had higher SOC concentrations than those in dry farming land[4]. It is necessary that an amount of
organic fertilizer is applied in dry farming land for the agricultural sustainable development.
Alternative partial root-zone irrigation (APRI) is novel water saving irrigation method and can
improve WUE of crop production without much yield reduction[5-6]. APRI requires that approximately
half of the root system of the crop is always exposed to drying soil while the remaining half is irrigated as
in normal irrigation. And irrigation would be exchanged between the wetted zone and dried zone in a
frequency according to crops, growing stages and soil water balance[6]. When soil water content was
maintained 55-65% of its capacity, compared to the full-irrigated maize, APRI reduced water
consumption and total dry mass accumulation by 34.4-36.8% and 6-11%, respectively, thus leading to
significantly increase in canopy WUE[7]. There are a large number of studies on WUE and physiological
responses of field crops and fruit trees by APRI technique[7-10], but few studies assessed the effect of
APRI on the grain-grass crop such as oat in the farming-grazing transitional zone. This study assess if
APRI can improve WUE and if some physiological responses are severely affected by water stress.
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Experimental site and materials
The field experiment was conducted in the arid and semiarid areas at the experimental station of
Baicheng academy of agricultural sciences, Baicheng city, Jilin province of China (latitude 4537N,
longitude 12248E, 152 m altitude). This station is within a continental monsoon climate area in the
northwestern part of Jilin province, with the average annual sunshine duration 2 919 h, average annual
temperature 4.9C. The frost-free period is 157 days, and average annual precipitation is 380 mm (the
precipitation during June-September accounts for 83% of the annual precipitation). Average annual
evaporation was 1 914 mm, which exceeded more 5 times of mean annual precipitation. The experimental
soil type is chernozem, and the physical and chemical characters of different depth of the soil can be
found in Table 1. Oat (Baiyan No. 2, a local dominant naked oat variety) was selected for this study.
Table 1. Physical and chemical parameters of the experimental field.
Soil depth
(cm)

Bulk density
(g cm-3)

Organic matter
(g kg-1)

Total nitrogen
(g kg-1)

Available phosphorus
(mg kg-1)

Available potassium
(mg kg-1)

pH

0-20
20-40
40-60
60-80
80-100
100-120

1.23
1.48
1.49
1.56
1.60
1.54

15.03
14.44
7.21
2.86
1.43
0.72

0.146
0.796
0.279
0.147
0.119
0.046

14.17
2.61
1.72
1.06
1.18
1.12

48.57
43.30
45.26
40.36
41.78
41.44

6.64
6.91
6.76
8.25
7.00
7.35

LIN
Yechun
et al./ Procedia
/ ProcediaEngineering
Engineering0028(2011)
(2012)000000
33 42
Author
name

2.2. Experimental design

Treatments were three levels of irrigation quantity and two organic fertilizer levels with two irrigation
methods. Three irrigation quantity levels either 60 mm or 90 mm and 120 mm was irrigated with
conventional irrigation (CI, soil was evenly irrigated with 32 cm pipe in each watering), alternative
partial root-zone irrigation (APRI, watering was alternately applied to two sides of one row by drip
irrigation as the method specified in Fig. 1) at the stages of jointing, heading and grain filling. The 120
mm irrigation level was popular irrigation quantity. Two organic fertilizer levels include 0 kg hm-2 (A1,
organic fertilizer is usually not used for oat at local areas) and 240 kg hm-2 (A2, organic matter content
40%). The recommended inorganic fertilizers were 37.5 kg N, 37.5 kg P 2O5 and 18 kg K2O per hectare.
The details of these treatments are showed in Table 2.
Table 2. Experimental design for the field experiment. CI: conventional irrigation by flooding, APRI: alternative partial root-zone
irrigation by drip irrigation.
Treatments

Organic fertilizer levels

Irrigation methods with different amounts of irrigation water

CI120 mm

0 kg hm-2 (A1)

CI (CK1) with 120 mm during all growing season

APRI60 mm

APRI with 60 mm during all growing season

APRI90 mm

APRI with 90 mm during all growing season

APRI120 mm

APRI with 120 mm during all growing season

CI120 mm

240 kg hm-2 (A2)

CI (CK2) with 120 mm during all growing season

APRI60 mm

APRI with 60 mm during all growing season

APRI90 mm

APRI with 90 mm during all growing season

APRI120 mm

APRI with 120 mm during all growing season

The field experiment had 24 plots in total, arranged in a randomized block design with three replicates
per treatment. Each plot size used in this experiment was 10 m 4 m, with a 50 cm wide space ridging
mulched 50 cm deep plastic film between two plots to prevent the effect of lateral soil water movement.
Except controls, thin-wall drip tapes with drippers 30 cm apart and a flow rate of 2.7 L h-1 0.15 MP
working pressure were used. The space between drip lines was 60 cm.

Fig. 1. Alternate partial root zone irrigation was laid out in field. T-1 and T-2 indicate the places of PVC tubes, which were used to
measure soil moisture by TDR.

35

36

LIN name
Yechun
et al. / Procedia
Engineering
28 000000
(2012) 33 42
Author
/ Procedia
Engineering
00 (2011)

2.3. Field management

The field experiment was ploughed in the winter of 2009. Seeds were sown on the April 10 th, 2010.
The distance between the rows was 30 cm, and sowing rate was 200 kg hm-2. During the growing season,
three times of irrigation were at the stages of jointing (55 days after sowing, DAS), heading (66 DAS) and
grain filling (74 DAS), respectively. All plots were applied with urea at a rate of 75 kg hm-2 as top
dressing at the heading stage of oat. The date of harvest was July 18th, 2010, for oat, i.e. 100 DAS.
2.4. Plant sampling and measurement
Soil water content: Two TRIME access tubes in each plot were installed vertically into the soil to the
depth of 1.2 m before oat sowing. The position of TRIME access tubes are found in Fig. 1. During the oat
growing season, volumetric soil water content (cm3/ cm3) was periodically measured by a time domain
reflectometry (TDR) tube probe (IMKO, Germany, TRIME-FM/T3) from 5 cm to 85 cm depth at an
increment of 10 cm.
Photosynthetic characteristics: The photosynthesis photon flux densities (PPFD) were measured from
9:00 am to 11:00 am on sunny day at the late grain filling stage (83 DAS) of oat. These expanded and
intact flag leaves in each treatment were selected, and a portable open gas exchange system was
employed; LED (model 6400-02B, LI-COR Inc.) was chosen as the light source of a portable open gas
exchange system. The gas entry was connected to a gas pole 4 m aboveground. The temperature, relative
humidity, flux and CO2 concentration were set at 25C, 60-70%, 500 mol s-1 and 400 mol mol-1,
respectively. The photosynthetic curves were made against the PPFD of 1500, 1200, 1000, 800, 600, 400,
200, 150, 100, 50, 20 and 0 mol m-2 s-1.
Dry biomass: 0.5 m successive plants of each plot were selected for their dry biomass accumulation
between jointing and ripening stages. Roots and shoots were separated to calculate root shoot ratio. Root
shoot ratio is the root dry weight over the shoot dry weight. Fresh plant material was firstly dried at
105C for 30 min, and then dried at 80C to constant weight.
Yield and water use efficiency: The total grain yield of one plot was determined by hand harvesting 1
m2 in each plot at maturity.
Crop evapotranspiration (ETc) was estimated using the water balance equation as follows:
ETc = I + P R D S

(1)

where I is the irrigation amount (mm), P is the precipitation in growing season (mm), R is the surface
runoff (mm), D is the drainage below crop, and S is the change of soil water storage. Each plot was
considered to have received the same amount of rainfall. To get S, T3 probe (TDR) was used to measure
verticality soil water content (cm3/ cm3) in the soil profile from 5 cm to 115 cm depth by 10 cm
increments just when sowing and harvesting. As there were ridges separating the plots to block runoff, the
surface runoff was neglected. The drainage was supposed to be negligible because drip irrigation hardly
affected the soil water content below 1 m depth[11].
Water use efficiency (WUE) was calculated using this formula as follows:
WUE = Y / ETc

(2)

where Y is the total grain yield (oven dry) of each plot (kg hm-2), ETc is the total crop evapotranspiration
over the entire season (mm).
2.5. Statistical analysis

LIN
Yechun
et al./ Procedia
/ ProcediaEngineering
Engineering0028(2011)
(2012)000000
33 42
Author
name

The data were analyzed by F-test using Statistical Analysis Software (SAS 8.2, SAS Institute Inc.,
USA). The significance of the treatment effect was determined using the F-test, and to determine the
significance of the means, least significant differences (LSD) was used with 5% probability level, and
Duncans multiple range test was used for comparing treatments.

Fig. 2. Mean daily air temperature, 0-20 cm soil temperature and precipitation during the whole growing season of oat.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Temperature and precipitation
Weather data would be obtained from the meteorological station of Baicheng Weather Bureau, which
is close to experimental field within 1 km. Mean daily air temperature, 0-20 cm soil temperature and
precipitation during the whole growing season are shown in Fig. 2. Mean daily air temperature ranged
from -1 to 30.4C, and average temperature during the whole growing season was 17.7C. Daily
maximum air temperature ranged from 1.7 to 37.3C, and minimum air temperature from -9.4 to 22.7C.
Before three-leaf stage (41 DAS), mean daily air temperature was 9.2C, which was much lower than the
optimum growth temperature (15C) for oat[12]. Soil temperature and mean air temperature had similar
trend in changing, as a result, lower soil temperature delayed the date of seeding, about a 20-day
extension. Low temperature affected the vegetative growth of oat at earlier stages, and high temperatures
impacted the reproductive growth of oat at later stages. High temperatures mainly occurred from booting
(59 DAS) to filling stage (74 DAS). Some reports indicated that high temperatures between panicle
initiation and anthesis caused floret abortion, reduced fertile tillers and consequently reduced grain
yield[13-14]. During the growing season, total effective precipitation (>5 mm) was 164 mm, and
primarily occurred at May and July. Drip irrigation was carried out in June, when there were only a few
showers.
3.2. Total water received and consumed in field
Total water received and consumed of different treatments during the whole growing season is shown
in Table 3. Precipitation in the growing season was 195 mm; however, effective precipitation (>5 mm)
was cut down to 164 mm. The change of soil water storage (S) was the lowest for APRI60 mm treatments,
but it increased as the irrigated quantity increased more than 60 mm, which was comparable to some early
reports[15-17]. CI120 mm had the highest evapotranspiration, and APRI60 mm got the lowest evapotran-

37

38

LIN name
Yechun
et al. / Procedia
Engineering
28 000000
(2012) 33 42
Author
/ Procedia
Engineering
00 (2011)

spiration. Whether there was organic fertilizer applied or not, under the same irrigation the change of soil
water storage and evapotranspiration tended to be similar.
Table 3. Total water received and consumed of different treatments during the whole growing season.
Treatment
I (mm)
0 kg hm-2 Organic fertilizer
CI120 mm
120
APRI60 mm
60
APRI90 mm
90
APRI120 mm
120
240 kg hm-2 Organic fertilizer
CI120 mm
120
APRI60 mm
60
APRI90 mm
90
APRI120 mm
120

P (mm)

S (mm)

D (mm)

ETc (mm)

164
164
164
164

-17
-3
-17
-18

0
0
0
0

301
227
271
302

164
164
164
164

-22
-5
-13
-17

0
0
0
0

305
229
267
301

3.3. Physiological responses

3.3.1. Plant height
The differences in early season plant height of each treatment were much lower than those in late
season, and there was the similar trend between treatments with organic fertilizer and without (Fig. 3).
During the early growing season (before June 11), each treatment had the similar plant height and the
differences among these treatments were not significant according to F-test (P>0.05). This could be
explained by the irrigation schedule not to be carried out. When the irrigation schedule was put into effect,
the differences between treatments began to be significant (P<0.05). The result showed that at A1
(without organic fertilizer) condition, APRI 60 mm significantly reduced the height by 7.43-11.04%
compared with CI120 mm, but the differences among other treatments were not significant except at milk
ripening stage. At A2 (240 kg hm-2 organic fertilizer) condition, APRI60 mm significantly reduced the
height by 7.30-8.87% compared with CI120 mm, and the differences among other treatments were not
significant. The lowest amount of irrigation significantly reduced the height of oat plant compared with
others, and organic fertilizer seemly reduced the differences among these treatments[18].

A1

A2

Fig. 3. Oat plant heights of different treatments during the growing season.

3.3.2. Root shoot ratio

As shown in Fig. 4, compared with conventional irrigation (CI), at A1 (without organic fertilizer)
condition, alternate partial root zone irrigation (APRI) reduced root shoot ratio of oat by 13.16-37.5%

LIN
Yechun
et al./ Procedia
/ ProcediaEngineering
Engineering0028(2011)
(2012)000000
33 42
Author
name

before the flowering stage (70 DAS). At A2 (240 kg hm-2 organic fertilizer) condition, APRI reduced it
by 14.29-42.86% at the booting (59 DAS) and flowering stages but increased it by 18.18-45.45% during
the flowering and filling stages (74 DAS). The results showed that differences were not significant among
these treatments with or without organic fertilizer at the other stages. The result also indicated that dry
mass accumulation was increasing but root shoot ratio was decreasing during the growing season.
When the irrigation schedule was applied, there were some differences among these treatments with
or without organic fertilizer, but differences were being reduced in the late growing season. Ben-Asher et
al.[19] and Gallardo et al.[20] considered that plant roots tended to proliferate in the area of high available
water, so root and shoot of a plant (i.e. oat) would be restricted by water stress. Under the lower irrigation,
a root shoot ratio was not always higher than the higher irrigation.

A1

A2

Fig. 4. Root shoot ratios of different treatments during the growing season of oat.

3.3.3. Photosynthesis
Photosynthetic light response curves of different treatments are shown in Fig. 5. The net
photosynthetic rate (Pn) firstly increased quickly with the increasing photosynthetic photon flux density
(PPFD), and then reduced slowly when the PPFD reached the light saturation point, which were similar
for treatments with or without organic fertilizer. When the PPFD ranged within 0-200 mol photons m2
s1, the Pn was most rapidly improved. Studies of Wei et al.[21] on soil water for Cyclobalanopsis glauca,
Zhou et al.[22] on oat varieties, and Guan et al.[23] on planting density for oat had the similar
photosynthetic light response curves within 0-200 mol photons m2 s1. When the PPFD ranged within
1000-1600 mol photons m2 s1, however, the Pn was slightly reduced. This could be explained by that
high light intensity usually causes high leaf temperature, but high temperature would force stomata to
close, and then Pn is reduced[24].

A1

A2

Fig. 5. Photosynthetic light response curves of different treatments with or without organic fertilizer during the late grain filling of
oat. PPFD and Pn in the figures mean photosynthetic photon flux density and net photosynthetic rate.

39

40

LIN name
Yechun
et al. / Procedia
Engineering
28 000000
(2012) 33 42
Author
/ Procedia
Engineering
00 (2011)

The result displayed that at A1 (without organic fertilizer) condition, the maximum net photosynthetic
rate (Pmax) of these treatments were 13.68 (CI120 mm), 4.11 (APRI60 mm), 12.19 (APRI90 mm) and 11.99
mol CO2 m2 s1 (APRI120 mm), respectively. Compared with CI120 mm, APRI reduced Pmax by 69.96%
(APRI60 mm), 10.89% (APRI90 mm) and 12.35% (APRI120 mm). At A2 (240 kg hm-2 organic fertilizer)
condition, the maximum net photosynthetic rate of these treatments were 10.97 (CI120 mm), 8.17 (APRI60
2 1
mm), 13.53 (APRI90 mm) and 11.85 (APRI 120 mm) mol CO2 m s , respectively. APRI60 mm was lower than
CI120 mm by 25.52%, but APRI90 mm and APRI120 mm were much higher than CI120 mm than 23.34% and
8.02%. The result indicated that severe water stress (i.e. only 60 mm) would significantly reduce Pn[2526], and these treatments with organic fertilizer generally had much higher Pn than those without organic
fertilizer[27].
3.3.4. Yield and water use efficiency
The grain yields by APRI under the two levels of organic fertilizer were a little lower than CI (Control),
and almost as much as the local average grain yield of naked oats (3000 kg hm-2)[14]. It always seemed
that application of organic fertilizer helped to increase grain yield under the same amount of irrigation.
Table 4. Total water received and consumed of different treatments during the whole growing season.
Treatment

ETc (mm)

Yield (kg hm-2)

WUE (kg hm-2 mm-1)

-2

0 kg hm Organic fertilizer
CI120 mm

301

3231.75 aa

10.74 ba

APRI60 mm

227

2755.13 b

12.14 a

APRI90 mm

271

3163.88 a

11.67 a

APRI120 mm

302

3094.13 a

10.25 b

305

3413.25 aa

11.19 ba

240 kg hm-2 Organic fertilizer

CI120 mm
APRI60 mm

229

2845.73 c

12.43 a

APRI90 mm

267

2977.88 bc

11.15 b

APRI120 mm

301

3168.75 ab

10.53 b

Differences among different treatments are significant by F-test (P<0.05). Means in a column with the same letter are not
significantly different according to Fishers LSD (P>0.05).

The result (Table 4) showed that at A1 (without organic fertilizer) condition, CI 120 mm (CK1) had the
highest grain yield compared with APRI60 mm or APRI90 mm or APRI120 mm, but only significantly (P<0.05)
increased production by 14.75% compared with APRI 60 mm; besides, compared with APRI90 mm and
APRI120 mm, APRI60 mm significantly reduced grain production by 14.84% and 12.30%, respectively. At A2
(240 kg hm-2 organic fertilizer) condition, compared with CI 120 mm (CK2), alternate partial root-zone
irrigation (APRI) significantly (P>0.05) reduced yield by 16.63% (APRI60 mm) or 12.76% (APRI90 mm) or
7.16% (APRI120 mm), respectively. Lesser irrigation water (i.e. 60 mm) always significantly reduced grain
yield compared with more irrigation water whether organic fertilizer was applied or not.
On the other hand, APRI60 mm always obtained the highest WUE under the two levels of organic
fertilizer (Table 4). Compared with the CI120 mm treatment, at A1, APRI60 mm and APRI90 mm significantly
improved WUE by 13.29% and 9.09%, respectively. There was no significant difference between APRI120
mm and CI120 mm; at A2, compared with the CI 120 mm treatment, only APRI60 mm treatment significantly
reduced water consumption of oat by 11.41%. Both the grain yield and WUE suggest that less irrigation
and higher production was beneficial, and APRI90 mm seemed to be the favorable for oat in this area.

LIN
Yechun
et al./ Procedia
/ ProcediaEngineering
Engineering0028(2011)
(2012)000000
33 42
Author
name

4. Conclusion
Compared with CI, APRI slightly reduced the grain yield of oat but water consumption substantially,
under water stress, especially. Thus, WUE was improved by this irrigation method (APRI). APRI under
the severe water deficit would significantly (P<0.05) reduce the height of oat plant than CI. APRI with
organic fertilizer could increase the root shoot ratio by 18.18-45.45% after the grain filling stage. Under
the severe water stress (i.e. only 60 mm) APRI significantly reduced the net photosynthetic rate (Pn), and
these treatments with organic fertilizer generally had much higher Pn than those without organic fertilizer.
Our results indicate that APRI under the moderate water stress improves WUE and root shoot ratio, and
slightly reduce grain yield and Pn with applied organic fertilizer, however, it is necessary to check these
preliminary results in field conditions.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the study grants from the Special Fund for Agro-scientific Research in the Public
Interest (nyhyzx07-009-2) and China Agriculture Research System (CARS-08-B-1). We would also like
to thank anybody for their assistance with this experimental work.
References
[1] Lascano RJ, Sojka RE. Preface. In: Lascano RJ, Sojka RE, editors. Irrigation of agricultural crops, 2nd ed. Agronomy
Monograph no. 30, Madison: ASA-CSSA-SSSA publishing; 2007, p. 664.
[2] Wang CC, Chen CQ, Huang S, Deng AX, Zhang W.J, Bian XM. Change characteristics of climate and soil resources in
Northeast China. Journal of Nanjing Agricultural University 2010;33:1924.
[3] Qiu JJ, Wang LG, Tang HJ, Li H, L CS. Studies on the situation of soil organic carbon storage in croplands in Northeast of
China. Agricultural Sciences in China 2005;4:101105.
[4] Wang ZM, Zhang B, Song KS, Liu DW, Li F, Guo ZX, Zhang SM. Soil organic carbon under different landscape attributes
in croplands of Northeast China. Plant Soil Environ. 2008;54:420427.
[5] Kang S, Liang Z, Pan Y, Zhang J. Alternate furrow irrigation for maize production in an arid area. Agric. Water Manage
2000 45:267274.
[6] Kang S, Zhang J. Controlled alternate partial root-zone irrigation: its physiological consequences and impact on water use
efficiency. J. Exp. Bot. 2004;55:24372446.
[7] Kang SZ, Liang ZS, Hu W, Zhang JH. Water use efficiency of controlled alternate irrigation on root divided maize plants.
Agric. Water Manage 1998;38:6976.
[8] Pan LP, Li Y, Tang LS. Growth and allocation of photosynthetic produces in cotton under alternate partial root-zone
irrigation. Scientia Agricultura Sinica 2009;42:29822986.
[9] Li FS, Wei CH, Zhang FC, Zhang JH., Nong MG, Kang SZ. Water use efficiency and physiological responses of maize
under partial root zone irrigation. Agric. Water Manage 2010;97:11561164.
[10] Liu XZ, Su Q, Sun HY. Effects of different alternate cycling on the growth, yield and quality of apple trees under
conditions of alternate partial root zone irrigation. Acta Ecological Sinica 2010;30:48814888.
[11] Du TS, Kang SZ, Hu XT, Yang XY. Effect of alternate partial root zone drip irrigation on yield and water use efficiency
of cotton. Scientia Agricultural Sinica 2005;38:20612068.
[12] Radford BJ, Key AJ. Temperature affects germination, mesocotyl length and coleoptile length of oats genotypes. Australian
Journal of Agricultural Research 1993;44:677688.
[13] Klinck HR, Sim SL. Inuence of temperature and photoperiod on growth and yield components in oats (Avena sativa).Can.
J. Bot 1977;55:96106.

41

42

LINname
Yechun
et al. / Procedia
Engineering
28000000
(2012) 33 42
Author
/ Procedia
Engineering
00 (2011)

[14] Ren CZ, Ma BL, Burrows V, Zhou J, Hu YG, Guo L, Wei L, Sha L, Deng L. Evaluation of early mature naked oat varieties
as a summer-seeded crop in dryland northern climate regions. Field Crops Research 2007;103:248254.
[15] Li YS, Wu LH, Zhao LM, Lu XH, Fan QL, Zhang FS. Influence of continuous plastic film mulching on yield, water use
efficiency and soil properties of rice fields under non-flooding condition. Soil & Tillage Research 2007;93:370378.
[16] Chakraborty D, Nagarajan S, Aggarwal P, Gupta VK, Tomar RK, Garg RN, Sahoo RN, Sarkar A, Chopra UK, Sarma KS,
Sundara KN. Effect of mulching on soil and plant water status, and the growth and yield of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) in a semi
arid environment. Agric. Water Manage 2008;95:13231334.
[17] Hou XY, Wang F.X, Han JJ, Kang SZ, Feng SY. Duration of plastic mulch for potato growth under drip irrigation in an
arid region of Northwest China. Agricultural and Forest Meteorology 2010;150:115121.
[18] Mohamed MA-H, Abdu M. Growth and oil production of fennel (Foeniculum vulgare mill): effect of irrigation and organic
fertilization. Biological Agriculture and Horticulture 2004;22:3139.
[19] Ben-Asher J, Silberbush M. Root distribution under trickle irrigation: Factors affecting distribution and comparison among
methods of determination. J. Plant Nutr. 1992;15:783794.
[20] Gallardo M, Turner NC, Ludwig C. Water relations, gas exchange and abscisic acid content of Lupinus cosentinii leaves in
response to drying different proportions of the root system. J. Exp. Bot. 1994;45:909918.
[21] Wei LY, Huang YQ, Li XK, Mo L, Yuan WY. Effect of soil water on photosynthetic characteristics and leaf traits of
Cyclobalanopsis glauca seedlings growing under nutrient rich and poor soil. Acta Ecologica Sinica 2009;29:160165.
[22] Zou ZN, Qi H, Meng XH, Sun JW. Study on light-response curve of photosynthesis of different oat varieties at early grain
filling stage. Journal of Triticeae Crops 2008;28:287290.
[23] Guan HJ, Qi H, Liu M. Study on different planting density on photosynthetic physio-response of oats at early grain filling
stage. Rain Fed Crops 2010;30:107109.
[24] Qi XL, Hu L, Dong HB, Zhang L, Wang GS, Gao C, Xu WG. Characteristics of photosynthesis in different wheat cultivars
under high light intensity and high temperature stresses. Acta Agronomica Sinica 2008;34:21962201.
[25] Shangguan ZP, Shao MA, Dyckmans J. Nitrogen nutrition and water stress effects on leaf photosynthetic gas exchange and
water use efficiency in winter wheat. Environmental and Experimental Botany 2000;44:141149.
[26] lvarez S, Navarro A, Ban S, Snchez-Blanco MJ. Regulated deficit irrigation in potted Dianthus plants: Effects of
severe and moderate water stress on growth and physiological responses. Scientia Horticulturae 2009;122:579585.
[27] Jiang D, Dai T, Jing Q, Cao W, Zhou Q, Zhao H, Fan X. Effects of long-term fertilization on leaf photosynthetic
characteristics and grain yield in winter wheat. Photosynthetica 2004;42:439446.