Wheat roots stay damaged long after floodwater drains, cutting yields
Crop Improvement
If your vegetable beds or grain plots sit in a low spot that floods briefly, fixing the soil after the water leaves won't rescue plants whose roots were already damaged, so drainage before the flood matters most.
Wheat that sat in flooded soil for a week while flowering lost a big share of its harvest. The soil's usable nitrogen returned to normal within about a week after the water drained, but the roots stayed shorter and smaller for weeks. With weaker roots, the plants couldn't pull in enough nitrogen to fill their grains.
Key Findings
Seven days of waterlogging cut soil nitrate by 40.8-48.9% and raised ammonium by 95.0-147.6%, but nitrate returned to control levels about seven days after drainage.
At 28 days after flowering, root length, surface area and volume were still down by up to 41.3%, 39.9% and 44.0%, alongside lower leaf chlorophyll, leaf area and post-flowering nitrogen uptake.
Grain yield fell 25.24-37.93% in Xiangmai 55 and 34.81-43.33% in Zhengmai 9023, mainly from lower 1000-grain weight and fewer grains per spike.
chevron_right Technical Summary
A week of waterlogging during wheat flowering cut grain yield by 25 to 43 percent. Soil nitrogen bounced back within about a week of draining, but damaged roots didn't, so plants kept taking up less nitrogen through grain filling.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Transient soil nitrogen transformation but persistent root morphological impairment associated with reduced apparent post-anthesis nitrogen accumulation and grain yield in winter wheat under anthesis waterlogging conditions
Context Waterlogging during anthesis limits winter wheat production in the Yangtze River Basin of China. Although waterlogging is known to alter soil nitrogen cycling and crop productivity, the tem...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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