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Soil Tilling, Mulching Key to China’s Potato Crop

By Susan V. Fisk



In China’s Loess Plateau, soil moisture makes a difference

When you think of China, do you think of potatoes? Maybe not, but in the Loess Plateau region of northwestern China, potato is the main food crop.

Even though it is such an important crop there, potato yields are lower than they could be. The area has a dry climate with uneven precipitation. Droughts are common, especially in the spring when crops are just starting to emerge. If soil moisture was more reliable, the potato crops would do better.

Rong Li and colleagues at Ningxia University in Yinchuan, China set out to discover if different tilling and mulching practices could improve soil moisture—and crop yields—in the Loess Plateau. The researchers studied three tillage options (conventional, no-till, and subsoiling) combined with three mulching options (no mulch, straw mulch, and plastic film).

Usually, the Loess Plateau fields are plowed, or tilled, after the harvest and left bare until spring planting. This is known as conventional tillage. Conservation tillage can mean not tilling the soil at all between crops (no-till). Another conservation option is subsoiling: deeply breaking the soil with a long blade, without turning it. Tillage helps water soak into the soil and improve water storage within the soil.

Li said, “We didn’t know whether tillage with varied mulching practices would improve drought resistance during the potato seedling stage in these dryland farming areas.”

The team studied the same field over two years—a relatively dry year followed by a wet year. For each combination of soil management options, they measured topsoil temperature, soil water content, seedling emergence rate, and marketable yield of potato tubers.

Plastic mulch warmed the soil more than the other mulching options. Straw mulch had a cooling effect compared with no mulch. However, all three options produced soil temperatures in the right range for rapid potato germination. So it seemed that topsoil temperature was not the key factor for early seedling growth.
 

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