Winter Wheat Grain Yield and Quality Response to Straw Mulching and Planting Pattern

Abstract

In North China Plain, straw mulching affected wheat grain quality, but decreased grain yield. Improving planting pattern is a measure to increase winter wheat grain yield. It was hypothesized that under different planting patterns, winter wheat yield reduction with straw mulching would be compensated and improved grain quality. We conducted experiments with two straw mulching conditions (straw mulching and non-straw mulching) and two planting patterns (wide-precision planting and conventional-cultivation planting) in 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 winter wheat growing seasons to study grain yield, protein content, wet gluten content, and flour dough farinographic properties. The results showed that straw mulching significantly reduced winter wheat grain yield, while grain yield was increased with wide-precision planting compared to the conventional-cultivation planting. As such, winter wheat grain yield reduction with straw mulching was compensated by wide-precision planting. Straw mulching and planting patterns had significant effect on the processing quality of winter wheat. In 2013–2014 and 2014–2015 winter wheat growing seasons, both dough development time and dough stabilization time were significantly higher in WM treatment than in CN treatment. These results indicate that straw mulching combined with wide-precision planting is a suitable measure to compensate winter wheat grain yield reduction and increase grain quality in North China.