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3 Plastic Film Mulched Ridge-Furrow Cultivation
In many countries around the world except China, plastic film mulch is widely used
to grow vegetable plants, horticulture and other cash crops rather that grain crops.
In China, plastic film mulch was firstly also used for vegetables production in green
house. In 1990s, scientists had studied the role of plastic film mulch in field grain
crops’ production and the tested crops included wheat, potato, and corn etc. (Wan
2013 ). In the past 20 years, dryland agriculture has developed rapidly based on the
mulched ridge-furrow cultivation.
Historically, wheat is the most important food crop and the source of local peo-
ple’s staple food in dryland agricultural areas of China. However, wheat growth
only covers about 1/3–1/2 of the rainy season. As a result, drought is a major obsta-
cle to wheat production, and the yield is normally low and unstable. Naturally,
wheat was chosen for the first crop to research its response in the productivity to the
plastic film mulch technology. In Lanzhou, the yield of spring wheat with plastic
mulch was increased by about 50 % relative to no plastic mulch (Li et al. 1999b).
The invention of seeders (dibblers) to sow wheat seeds underneath the plastic film
has brought an easy use of plastic film mulching in wheat cropping and thus a popu-
larization of the technology in the wheat production in dryland areas in the 1990s.
In 2000, a promotion of plastic film mulch in wheat production was proposed, in
which furrows were dug and gaps (ridges) between the furrows were mulched with
plastic film. Wheat crops were planted beside the edge of film in furrows. This new
technology of plastic film mulch largely reduced management procedures in whet
growth. By using this mulched ridge-furrow cropping, wheat yield reached to
7311 kg ha−^1 at a site with a precipitation of 685 mm, 40 % higher than under non-
mulched fields, 31% higher than crushed-stubble mulched no-till cropping, and
20 % higher than stubble-mulched sub-tilled treatment (Xue et al. 2006 ). Prior to
wheat planting, covering a layer of soil on mulching-film significantly reduced
Fig. 3 Grain yield effect by application of nitrogen and phosphorus chemical fertilizer (Left) and
organic fertilizer of manure (Right). CK, NP, M, MNP represented no any fertilizer application, NP
(Nitrogen and phosphorus) fertilizer application, manure fertilizer application, and both manure
and NP chemical fertilizers application, respectively. NP yield effects (Left) are fluctuating very
much and trend to decline but manure application yield effects (Right) are trending to increase as
the terrace is developing (Data from Liu et al. 2013 )
F.-M. Li et al.