Improving Rice Yield by Promoting Pre-anathesis Growth in Subtropical Environments
Peng Jiang,
Xingbing Zhou,
Lin Zhang,
Mao Liu,
Hong Xiong,
Xiaoyi Guo,
Yongchuan Zhu,
Juntao Luo,
Lin Chen,
Jie Liu,
Fuxian Xu
Affiliations
Peng Jiang
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Xingbing Zhou
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Lin Zhang
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Mao Liu
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Hong Xiong
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Xiaoyi Guo
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Yongchuan Zhu
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Juntao Luo
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Lin Chen
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Jie Liu
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Fuxian Xu
Key Laboratory of Southwest Rice Biology and Genetic Breeding, Ministry of Agriculture, Rice and Sorghum Research Institute, Sichuan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Deyang 618000, China
Rice yield is greatly influenced by climatic factors and soil fertility in the location where it is grown, but information about the individual effects of climatic factors and soil fertility variables is difficult to distinguish because they are often not independent. The objective of this study was to demonstrate the effect of climatic factors on grain yield when soil fertility was not a confounding factor for explaining yield differences across two subtropical environments. Field and pot experiments with six rice cultivars were conducted in Deyang and Luzhou, Sichuan Province, China. We found that rice yield was higher in Deyang than in Luzhou by 7.0–16.8% for field experiments and by 57.6–87.4% for pot experiments. Biomass production rather than harvest index was responsible for the yield difference. Maximum and minimum temperatures and cumulative solar radiation (CSR) before heading (HD) were higher in Deyang than in Luzhou, whereas after HD, maximum and minimum temperatures were lower in Deyang than in Luzhou. Rice yield was more closely related to maximum and minimum temperatures and CSR before HD than to these parameters after HD. There was no difference in yield between soil types from Deyang and Luzhou within the same ecological condition. Thus, the yield difference between the two subtropical environments was mainly caused by the difference in climatic factors. The differences in biomass between Deyang and Luzhou were mostly due to variations in pre-heading crop growth rate (pre-CGR) and pre-heading radiation use efficiency (pre-RUE), which were induced by varying temperatures and CSR. We concluded that lower yield in Luzhou was associated with lower pre-CGR and pre-RUE. Our study suggests that developing rice cultivars with high pre-CGR and pre-RUE through a breeding program may also be a feasible approach to achieve high yield in subtropical environments.
