Abstract: Our understanding of climate impacts and adaptations on crop growth and productivity can be accelerated by analyzing historical data over the past few decades. We used crop trial and climate data from 1981 to 2009 at 34 national agro-meteorological stations in the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain (HHHP) of China to investigate the impacts of climate factors during different growth stages on the growth and yields of winter wheat, accounting for the adaptations such as shifts in sowing dates, cultivars, and agronomic management. Maximum (T-max) and minimum temperature (T-min) during the growth period of winter wheat increased significantly, by 0.4 and 0.6 degrees C/decade, respectively, from 1981 to 2009, while solar radiation decreased significantly by 0.2 MJ/m(2)/day and precipitation did not change significantly. The trends in climate shifted wheat phenology significantly at 21 stations and affected wheat yields significantly at five stations. The impacts of T-max and T-min differed in different growth stages of winter wheat. Across the stations, during 1981-2009, wheat yields increased on average by 14.5% with increasing trends in T-min over the whole growth period, which reduced frost damage, however, decreased by 3.0% with the decreasing trends in solar radiation. Trends in Tmax and precipitation had comparatively smaller impacts on wheat yields. From 1981 to 2009, climate trends were associated with a <= 30% (or <= 1.0% per year) wheat yield increase at 23 stations in eastern and southern parts of HHHP; however with a <= 30% (or <= 1.0% per year) reduction at 11 other stations, mainly in western part of HHHP. We also found that wheat reproductive growth duration increased due to shifts in cultivars and flowering date, and the duration was significantly and positively correlated with wheat yield. This study highlights the different impacts of T-max and T-min in different growth stages of winter wheat, as well as the importance of management (e.g. shift of sowing date) and cultivars shift in adapting to climate change in the major wheat production region. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Abstract: Rice models have been widely used in simulating and predicting rice phenology in contrasting climate zones, however the uncertainties from model structure (different equations or models) and/or model parameters were rarely investigated. Here, five rice phenological models/modules (Le., CERES-Rice, ORYZA2000, RCM, Beta Model and SIMRIW) were applied to simulate rice phenology at 23 experimental stations from 1992 to 2009 in two major rice cultivation regions of China: the northeastern China and the southwestern China. To investigate the uncertainties from model biophysical parameters, each model was run with randomly perturbed 50 sets of parameters. The results showed that the median of ensemble simulations were better than the simulation by most models. Models couldn’t simulate well in some specific years despite of parameters optimization, suggesting model structure limit model performance in some cases. The models adopting accumulative thermal time function (e.g., CERES-Rice and ORYZA2000) had better performance in the southwestern China, in contrast, those adopting exponential function (e.g., Beta model and RCM model) had better performance in the northeastern China. In northeastern China, the contribution of model structure and model parameters to model total variance was, respectively, about 55.90% and 44.10% in simulating heading date, and about 75.43% and 24.57% in simulating maturity date. In the southwestern China, the contribution of model structure and model parameters to model total variance was, respectively, about 79.97% and 27.03% in simulating heading date, about 92.15% and 7.85% in simulating maturity date. Uncertainty from model structure was the most relevant source. The results highlight that the temperature response functions of rice development rate under extreme climate conditions should be improved based on environment-controlled experimental data.

Abstract: Agricultural production systems are facing the challenges of increasing food production while reducing environmental cost, particularly in China. To improve yield potential and eco-efficiency simultaneously for the rice-wheat rotation system in China, we investigated changes in potential yields and yield gaps based on the field experiment data from 1981 to 2009 at four representative agro-meteorological experiment stations, along with the Agricultural Production System Simulator (APSIM) rice-wheat model. We further optimized crop cultivar and sowing/transplanting date, and investigated crop yield, water and nitrogen use efficiency, and environment impact of the rice-wheat rotation system in response to water and nitrogen supply. We found that the yield gaps between potential yields and farmer’s yields were about 8101 kg/ha or 45.3% of the potential yield, which had been shrinking from 1981 to 2009. To improve yield potentials and eco-efficiency, the cultivars of rice and wheat that properly increase both radiation use efficiency and grain weight are promising. Rice cultivars breeding need to maintain the length of panicle development and reproductive phase. High-yielding wheat cultivars are characterized by medium vernalization sensitivity, low photoperiod sensitivity and short length of floral initiation phase. Proper shift in sowing date can alleviate the negative effect of climate risk. Intermittent irrigation scheme (irrigate until surface soil saturated when average water content of surface soil is < 50% of saturated water content) for rice, together with nitrogen application rate of 390-420 kg N/ha (180-210 kg N/ha for rice and 210 kg N/ha for wheat), is suggested for the rice-wheat rotation system to maintain high yield with high resource use efficiency. This suggested nitrogen application rates are lower than those currently used by many local farmers. Our findings are useful to improve yield potential and eco-efficiency for the rice-wheat rotation system in China. Furthermore, this study demonstrates an effective approach with crop modelling to design fanning system for sustainable intensification, which can be adapted to other farming systems and regions.