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Acta Agron Sin ›› 2013, Vol. 39 ›› Issue (05): 761-766.doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1006.2013.00761

• REVIEW •     Next Articles

Improving Water Use Efficiency of Crops by Exploring Variety Differences

MEI Xu-Rong,ZHONG Xiu-Li,LIU Xiao-Ying   

  1. Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development in Agriculture, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Key Laboratory for Dryland Agriculture, Ministry of Agriculture, Beijing 100081, China
  • Received:2012-08-23 Revised:2013-10-16 Online:2013-05-12 Published:2013-02-19
  • Supported by:

    This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant number: 30871447) and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (Grant number: 2011AA100501).

Abstract:

Improving water use efficiency (WUE) is considered to be an important measure for mitigating the conflict between water resource crisis and sustainable crop production. In this review, variety differences in WUE at different time-space scales, the scaling-up of WUE, and the association between WUE and yield are discussed. WUEintrinsic (WUEi) shows wide genotypic variability, in particular, under water deficit conditions. Variation in WUEi seems to be associated rather with variation in stomatal conductance in cereals. WUEplant (WUEp) differed larger among genotypes under water deficit conditions, in contrast with the smaller difference under well-watered conditions. Stomatal conductance is a determinant trait affecting WUEp based on the studies performed up to date. Genotypes differ largely in stomatal conductance in response to water deficit. Scaling-up of WUE between leaf level and field population level is limited by canopy and boundary layer resistances, partition of water use between soil evaporation and plant transpiration and the internal allocation pattern of biomass. High WUEi associated with low stomatal conductance can result in a considerable yield gain in a dry, stored-moisture, environment but it is likely to be disadvantageous in terms of yield in more favorable growth environments.

Key words: Water use efficiency, Yield, Water deficit, Variety difference

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