Plant-based assessment of inherent soil productivity and contributions to China's cereal crop yield increase since 1980.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

China's food production has increased 6-fold during the past half-century, thanks to increased yields resulting from the management intensification, accomplished through greater inputs of fertilizer, water, new crop strains, and other Green Revolution's technologies. Yet, changes in underlying quality of soils and their effects on yield increase remain to be determined. Here, we provide a first attempt to quantify historical changes in inherent soil productivity and their contributions to the increase in yield.

Methods

The assessment was conducted based on data-set derived from 7410 on-farm trials, 8 long-term experiments and an inventory of soil organic matter concentrations of arable land.

Results

Results show that even without organic and inorganic fertil

SUBMITTER: Fan M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3776784 | biostudies-literature | 2013

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature