Abstract: A field experiment was conducted at Wenjiang and Hanyuan using indica hybrid rice Eryou 498. With the cultivation models including wide-narrow row spacing cultivation, triangle cultivation, spreading planting by expanding row spacing and reducing plant space, scattered planting cultivation. The results indicated that with the increase of N application at booting stage, canopy light transmittance performance improved, population quality index including single stem and sheath weight in heading, the ratio of leaf area of productive tillers and ratio of leaf area from flag leaf to 3rd leaf from top of productive tillers increased, leaf area index (LAI) and ratio of canopy respiration to total canopy apparent photosynthesis (CR/TCAP) decreased slightly, canopy apparent photosynthesis (CAP) increased first and decreased afterwards at Wenjiang, but showed decreasing trend at Hanyuan. When nitrogen fertilizer was applied at 60% before transplanting, 30% at tillering, and 10% at booting, it was beneficial to improving canopy light transmittance performance and population quality for wide-narrow row spacing cultivation and triangle cultivation, their CAP increased on the premise of no increasing in CR/TCAP, their ability of photosynthetic production improved at last. When nitrogen fertilizer was applied at 50% before transplanting, 30% at tillering, and 20% at booting, the increasing range of canopy light transmittance performance and population quality for spreading planting by expanding row spacing and reducing plant space was greater than that of other cultivation models, its CAP was higher than that of other cultivation models, but CR/TCAP did not increase at the same time, even decreased somewhat, so its capacity of photosynthetic production was higher than that of other cultivation models. When nitrogen fertilizer was applied at 40% before transplanting, 10% at tillering, and 50% at booting, scattered planting cultivation was propitious to improving population quality and interception of light, it had obvious advantages in photosynthetic production by increasing CAP during middle-late period of filling stage and decreasing CR/TCAP, but there was no advantage in photosynthetic production if temperature and light conditions was improved. From above, it was suggested that improving capacity of photosynthetic production should adopt suitable nitrogen application strategy according to ecological condition and cultivation model.

Key words: Ecological condition, Cultivation models, Nitrogen application strategy, Canopy characteristics, Photosynthetic