Development, growth, and nitrogen use of autumn- and spring-sown facultative wheat

Abstract

Spring-sown crops are expected to have a higher risk of drought during summer in the next decades in Central Europe due to expected climate change. Therefore, a two-year experiment was conducted under Pannonian growing conditions in Eastern Austria to investigate the effect of autumn-and spring-sowing of facultative wheat. Autumn-sowing of facultative wheat enhanced crop development, soil coverage, crop stand height, crop growth rate, and nitrogen (N) utilization efficiency during the vegetation period compared to spring-sowing; duration of growth stages was prolonged and crops were earlier ripe. In contrast, spring-sowing resulted in higher relative growth rates, higher N concentrations of aboveground dry matter, higher relative N uptake rates, and more mineral N in the soil. At harvest, grain yield and yield components ears m −2 and thousand kernel weight (TKW) were higher in autumn-sown than in spring-sown wheat, resulting thereby in an increased seed yield. Spring-sown wheat had higher N concentrations in grain and in straw. Anyhow, N yield was slightly higher with autumn-sowing due to the higher grain and straw yields. Grain and straw yield, plant stand height, ears m −2 , and TKW were impaired in the second experimental year by a severe drought for both sowing dates as well as N concentrations and N yields of grain and straw, partial factor N use efficiency and N utilization efficiency. But the yield components harvest index, grains m −2 , and grains ear −1 were strongly impaired with spring-sowing under drought conditions. Thus, autumn-sowing of wheat resulted in higher yield stability across both years, based on these yield components highlighting possible benefits of autumn-sowing with expected summer drought under climate change.

Nitrogen yield and nitrogen fixation of winter faba beans

“…Autumn-sowing generally results in earlier initiation and longer duration of development stages than spring-sowing (Neugschwandtner et al 2015a). Additionally, N fixation can be higher with earlier planting as shown for lentil and pea (McCauley et al 2012).…”

Effect of seed size on soil cover, yield, yield components and nitrogen uptake of two-row malting barley

“…Several important factors around sowing affect germination, emergence, crop stand establishment, early vigor and consequently, yield formation in crop cultivation. Among those factors are soil cultivation and sowing method (conventional tillage, conservation tillage, no-till), seeding rates, sowing dates, row and inter-row spacing, plant population density, uniformity of the seed distribution, nutrient supply in the soil, soil reaction, waterlogging, allelopathy caused by decomposing crop residue (Varga et al, 2000;Agegnehu and Honermeier, 1997;Bavec et al, 2002;Kübler et al, 2002;Munir, 2002;Steffens et al, 2005;Tsybulya, 2002;Lošák et al, 2012Chovancova et al, 2015Neugschwandtner et al, 2015a; and sowing rates in intercropping designs . Further, seed quality is important for emergence and compensation of stress affecting germination and the seedling (Heyland and Meer, 1992).…”

Growth analysis of winter wheat cultivars as affected by nitrogen fertilization / Wachstumsanalyse von Winterweizensorten in Abhängigkeit von Stickstoffdüngung

“…A better understanding of crop yield physiology would help to achieve the rates of yield improvement required in the near future. Various authors have published the results of growth analysis on various crops in terms of different management practices and cultivar comparisons, including maize (e.g., Bullock et al, 1993), wheat (Davidson and Campbell, 1984;Barneix, 1990;Karimi and Siddique, 1991;Ozturk et al, 2006;Neugschwandtner et al, 2015), triticale (Royo and Blanco, 1999), Bermuda grass (Silva et al, 2016), soybean (Clawson et al, 1986;Yusuf et al, 1999;Hu and Wiatrak, 2012), potato (Oliveira et al, 2016), sugar beet (Hoffman and KlugeSeverin, 2011) and peas (Silim et al, 1985;Munier-Jolain et al, 2010;Neugschwandtner et al, 2013). However, few studies appear to have been made on the effect of agronomic treatments on the growth and productivity of wheat at both the individual plant and plant stand levels.…”