Abstract
Global solar radiation has exhibited complicated changes with significant temporal and regional variations, while greater crop light utilization efficiency (LUE) was reported due to the increased yield. Based on daily meteorological data collected at 207 weather stations in the irrigated maize area of Northwest China (IMA) and the spring maize area in Northeast China (SMA), the spatiotemporal characteristics of regional photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) during the maize growing season and LUE are analyzed. Additionally, the probable reasons causing the changes in these variables are discussed from 1961 to 2014. Large regional differences of PAR during the maize growing season were found in the study area ranging from 4107.2 to 5937.3 mol·m−2, which gradually decreased from west to east. Compared to the SMA, the IMA exhibited 12.7% greater PAR during the past 54 years, while IMA showed lower LUE in 1961 − 1999 and 28.9% higher than SMA since the 2000s. Both SMA the IMA have experienced a continuous dimming trend in the maize growing season as the total PAR has decreased by 4.63%, with an average change rate of − 36.04 mol·m−2·10a−1. However, a significant increasing trend for the maize LUE at the farmer’s level was found in 1961–2014, which has changed from 0.39 to 2.90% in IMA and 0.39 to 2.19% in SMA, respectively. Furthermore, large LUE gaps exist between farmer’s level and high record level, as the highest LUE has reached 6.74% in the study area. The inconsistent changes between the PAR and the LUE resulted from the increased yield. The positive effect of agricultural technology and crop varieties’ improvement on maize yield compensated for the negative impact of PAR reduction. In summary, asymmetry dynamic change trends between the PAR and the LUE were found during the maize growing season in North China, and the IMA showed higher maize yield, PAR, and LUE. Making full use of radiation resources may be one of the effective ways to improve the maize yield in the SMA, which could help maize production better adapt to climate change.
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Data availability
The datasets used or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Code availability
We wrote all the original programs with Matlab for the analysis in this work, and we are willing to share them upon request.
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The authors appreciate the editor and reviewers for their valuable suggestions and questions to improve the quality of the manuscript. We thank LetPub for its linguistic assistance during the preparation of this manuscript.
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National Key Research and Development Project (Grant No. 2021YFD1901104-1); Major Science and Technology Projects of Inner Mongolia (Grant No. 2020ZD0005-0101).
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Writing—original draft: Huayun He. Conceptualization: Qi Hu, Jing Wang, Xuebiao Pan, and Zhihua Pan. Supervision: Qi Hu and Xuebiao Pan. Methodology: Qi Hu, Jing Wang. Resources: Mengyuan Xing, Rong Li. Formal analysis: Yuanyuan Liu, Xiaochen Wang, and Rong Li. Investigation: Xiaochen Wang. Writing—review and editing: Huayun He, Xuebiao Pan, Zhihua Pan, Binxiang Huang, and Qijin He. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Highlights
• Dimming occurred during the maize growing season in North China.
• Asymmetric trends in PAR and LUE were found during the maize growing season in North China.
• IMA showed significantly higher yield, PAR, and LUE compared to SMA.
• Advances in agricultural technology and crop varieties compensated for the negative impact of PAR reduction.
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He, H., Hu, Q., Wang, J. et al. Asymmetric changes of photosynthetically active radiation and light utilization efficiency during the maize growing season in North China. Theor Appl Climatol 148, 1447–1458 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04000-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00704-022-04000-z