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Increased yield potential of wheat-maize cropping system in the North China Plain by climate change adaptation

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Abstract

In the North China Plain, the grain yield of irrigated wheat-maize cropping system has been steadily increasing in the past decades under a significant warming climate. This paper combined regional and field data with modeling to analyze the changes in the climate in the last 40 years, and to investigate the influence of changes in crop varieties and management options to crop yield. In particular, we examined the impact of a planned adaptation strategy to climate change -“Double-Delay” technology, i.e., delay both the sowing time of wheat and the harvesting time of maize, on both wheat and maize yield. The results show that improved crop varieties and management options not only compensated some negative impact of reduced crop growth period on crop yield due to the increase in temperature, they have contributed significantly to crop yield increase. The increase in temperature before over-wintering stage enabled late sowing of winter wheat and late harvesting of maize, leading to overall 4–6% increase in total grain yield of the wheat-maize system. Increased use of farming machines and minimum tillage technology also shortened the time for field preparation from harvest time of summer maize to sowing time of winter wheat, which facilitated the later harvest of summer maize.

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely acknowledge the Special Fund for agriculture profession (201103003), National Basic Research Program of China (2009CB118608) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41101046). This work is also supported by National Basic Research Program of China (2005CB121106) and the Innovative Group Grant of the National Science Foundation of China (30821003). The authors acknowledge the anonymous referees for their valuable comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

    Jing Wang, Xiaoguang Yang & Fusuo Zhang

  2. CSIRO Land and Water, GPO Box 1666, Canberra, ACT2601, Australia

    Enli Wang

  3. National Climate Center, China Meteorological Administration, Beijing, 100081, China

    Hong Yin

Authors
  1. Jing Wang
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  2. Enli Wang
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  3. Xiaoguang Yang
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  4. Fusuo Zhang
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  5. Hong Yin
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Correspondence to Jing Wang, Enli Wang or Xiaoguang Yang.

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Wang, J., Wang, E., Yang, X. et al. Increased yield potential of wheat-maize cropping system in the North China Plain by climate change adaptation. Climatic Change 113, 825–840 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0385-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10584-011-0385-1

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