Effect of sowing patterns on growth, development and yield formation of wheat in rice stubble land

Artificial broadcast sowing of wheat in rice stubble land, under no-tillage conditions, has been widely used in the Southwest Region of China. In order to study the effects of wheat sown with the 2BMFDC-6 seeder on seedling quality, growth, development and yield, comparative tests between artificial broadcast sowing and machine seeder sowing under no-tillage condition were conducted in Guanghan, Sichuan Province from 2009 to 2012. The results indicated that sowing efficiency, emergence rate, seedling uniformity and individual and population quality in the seedling stage of the machine sowing treatment was higher than that by artificial broadcast sowing treatment. However, in the later growth stages, individual and whole plot data of machine sowing treatment were lower. The amount of dry matter accumulation and leaf area index in the flowering stage were decreased by 1.8% and 8.9%, respectively in the 2BMFDC-6 sowing treatment as compared to artificial broadcast sowing treatment. In the maturity stage, seed setting spikelets and grains per spike was less in machine sowing treatment, which was lower than that in artificial broadcast sowing treatment at 4.2 % and 3.5%, respectively. 1000-grain weight was increased by 4.9% in machine sowing treatment. The yields of the two treatments was equivalent. In the flowering stage, available soil nitrogen in the 2BMFDC-6 seeder treatment in the arable layer was reduced by 7.8%, and plant total nitrogen was reduced by 19.4% compared with artificial broadcast sowing treatment. With the increase of the application of nitrogen fertilizer, the growth and yield parameters of plots seeded by the 2BMFDC-6 seeder were significantly improved. On the basis of these results, we concluded that the 2BMFDC-6 seeder improved the sowing and seedling emergence quality of wheat in rice stubble land, appropriate nitrogen application is needed to achieve higher growth quality and yield.