《Applying a salinity response function and zoning saline land for three ifeld crops：a case study in the Hetao Irrigation District Inner Mongolia China》.pdfVIP

Journal of Integrative Agriculture 2015, 14(1): 178–189 Available online at ScienceDirect RESEARCH ARTICLE Applying a salinity response function and zoning saline land for three field crops: a case study in the Hetao Irrigation District, Inner Mongolia, China 1 2 1 1 1 1 TONG Wen-jie , CHEN Xiao-li , WEN Xin-ya , CHEN Fu , ZHANG Hai-lin , CHU Qing-quan , Shadrack Batsile Dikgwatlhe1 1 College of Agriculture and Biotechnology, China Agricultural University/Key Laboratory of Farming System, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing 100193, P.R.China 2 Beijing Research Center of Intelligent Equipment for Agriculture, Beijing Academy of Agriculture and Forestry Sciences, Beijing 100097, P.R.China Abstract Salinity is one of the major abiotic factors affecting the growth and productivity of crops in Hetao Irrigation District, China. In this study, the salinity tolerances of three local crops, wheat (Triticum aestinum L.), maize (Zea mays L.) and sunflower (Helianthus annuus L.), growing in 76 farm fields are evaluated with modified discount function. Salinity ecological zones appropriate for these local crops are characterized and a case study is presented for crop salinity ecological zoning. The results show that the yield reductions of wheat, maize and sunflower when grown in saline soils are attributed primarily to a reduction in spikelet number, 1 000-grain weight and seed number per head, respectively. Sunflower is the most tolerant crop among the three which had a salinity tolerance index (ST-index) of 12.24, followed by spring maize and spring wheat with ST-Indices of 9.00 and 7.43, respectively. According to the crop salinity tolerance results, the arable land in the Hep