Cooperative Effect of Alternate Wetting and Drying Irrigation and Rice Variety Improvement on Increasing Yield and Water Use Efficiency

• DOI: 10.20944/preprints202502.0005.v1
• Publication Date: 2025-02-06T02:35:16Z
• Authors: Qinghao Meng; Wenjiang Jing; Nan Zhang; Rumeng Sun; Jia Yin; Ying Zhang; Junyao Shi; Feng He; Lijun Liu; Jianhua Zhang; Hao Zhang
• Keywords: Water use

Enhancing rice (Oryza sativa L.) productivity and optimizing water use efficiency (WUE) are critical for advancing sustainable agricultural practices. This study selected six mid-season indica varieties to investigate the impacts of alternate wetting drying irrigation (AWD) conventional (CI) on grain yield, WUE, filling, root traits. A two-year field experiment demonstrated that AWD significantly enhanced yield WUE. Flag leaf photosynthetic rate characteristics, including weight, length, absorbing surface area, oxidation activity, zeatin (Z) + riboside (ZR) contents in panicles, roots, bleeding, were superior under across early, mid, late filling stages. The flag traits, such as exudates, found be during Notably, delayed senescence stage, which sustained activity promoted particularly inferior spikelets. These results indicate is a promising regime improve WUE by