Alternate wetting and drying irrigation and phosphorus rates affect grain yield and quality and heavy metal accumulation in rice

Tao Song, Debatosh Das, Qijuan Hu, Feng Yang, Jianhua Zhang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articlepeer-review

43 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) irrigation was reported to increase rice root activity and element bioavailability, which results in enhanced heavy metal (HM) absorption and this HM ends up in rice grains. HM uptake was also affected by the levels of phosphorus (P) fertilizer application. HMs enter food chain via consumption of rice grains and cause health problems. In this study, we compared the differences in grain yield, grain quality, water use efficiency (WUE), partial factor productivity of applied P (PFPp), HM contents in different tissues and transfer coefficient (TC) of HMs under a combination of treatments involving two irrigation regimes (continuous flooding (CF) and AWD irrigation) and three P fertilizer application levels (0.4 g P2O5/kg soil, HP; 0.2 g P2O5/kg soil, MP; 0 g P2O5/kg soil, LP). Compared to CF, AWD irrigation increased grain yield (without reducing grain quality), decreased irrigation water use and the number of irrigation events needed and improved WUE and PFPp at all three P fertilizer application levels, while the accumulation of HMs in grains increased when more P was applied. This accumulation of HMs in grains thus requires immediate attention to the level of P fertilizer application and its optimization in water-saving AWD irrigation to minimize grain HM content.

Original languageEnglish
Article number141862
JournalScience of the Total Environment
Volume752
Early online date22 Aug 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15 Jan 2021

Scopus Subject Areas

  • Environmental Engineering
  • Environmental Chemistry
  • Waste Management and Disposal
  • Pollution

User-Defined Keywords

  • Grain quality
  • Heavy metal
  • Rice
  • Transfer coefficient
  • Water-saving irrigation
  • Yield

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