Tillage practices offset wheat yield reductions under limited irrigation regime in the North China Plain

Water shortage is becoming the most important limiting factor for wheat production in many regions such as the North China Plain (NCP). The highly intensive production of grain yield to meet food demand has led to serious negative impacts on the environment in this area. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of plough tillage (P), subsoiling tillage (S) and rotary tillage (R) on water consumption characteristics, dry matter accumulation and remobilization, grain yield and water use efficiency (WUE) of winter wheat under water saving irrigation (W2), limiting irrigation (W1) and rainfed conditions (W0). The study was carried out at the Gaocheng Experiment Station of Hebei Agricultural University during 2014–2016. The results showed that deep tillage practices (plough tillage and subsoiling) can offset wheat yield reductions under limited irrigation regime. The grain yield with plough tillage under rainfed condition (P0) produced similar yield of 8546 kg ha−1 over two years, which was not significantly different from rotary tillage under water saving condition (R2). The plough tillage gave higher water storage in the 0–200 cm soil layer at the pre-sowing stage of the second winter wheat crop by 67.7%, 64.4% and 39.8% compared to rotary tillage under W2, W1 and W0 conditions, respectively. The soil water consumption and evapotranspiration (ET) with plough tillage and subsoiling were higher than those with rotary tillage under W1 and W0 treatments in both years. Under the W0 treatment, the pre-anthesis dry matter remobilization (DMR), coefficient of pre-anthesis dry matter remobilization (TCDMR) and contribution of pre-anthesis dry matter to grain (CDMR) with plough tillage and subsoiling tillage were lower than those under rotary tillage, but the post-anthesis accumulated dry matter accumulation (ADM) and its accumulated coefficient (ACDM) were higher than those under rotary tillage in both years due to higher soil water consumption. Therefore, deep tillage would be a desirable tillage practice for wheat production under limited irrigation condition.