How widespread are yield declines in long-term rice experiments in Asia?

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Abstract

This paper analyzes yield trends in 30 long-term experiments (LTEs) conducted at 24 sites with intensive rice monoculture or rice-upland crop systems in tropical and subtropical regions of Asia. The objectives of the analysis were to (1) investigate how widespread yield declines are in experiments with constant levels of input and (2) study the cross-sectional relationship between the magnitude of yield trends and the initial yield level in the experiment. In rice–rice (–rice) systems, yields in the most favorable climatic season (dry season) have remained stable in many LTEs conducted outside of IRRI, mostly at yield levels of 4–7 Mg ha−1 with recommended rates of N, P and K applied. Statistically significant yield declines at p≤0.05 were observed in only two of 21 data sets outside of IRRI, although all three LTEs at IRRI showed yield declines. One dry season experiment showed a statistically significant yield increase. In the less favorable climatic season (wet season), only two of 14 data sets outside of IRRI showed a statistically significant declining yield trend, while three of four at IRRI showed statistically significant yield declines. In rice-upland crop (typically wheat) LTEs, a significant yield decline for rice was found in only one of ten data sets. For wheat, there were no statistically significant yield declines, although there was one statistically significant yield increase. There was a negative correlation between the magnitude of yield decline and the level of initial yields, but it was not statistically significant. The data suggest that while yield declines exist in some LTEs, they are less common than previously thought, particularly at moderate yield levels. Where yield declines occurred, they were related to soil properties affected by prolonged soil wetness or soil nutrient depletion.

Introduction

Long-term experiments (LTEs) provide one of the means to measure sustainable management systems in agriculture (Rasmussen et al., 1998). They are records of the past and may serve as early warning systems for the future. This paper provides an updated review of yield trends in LTEs with intensive rice systems of tropical and subtropical regions of Asia, cropping systems that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s during the Green Revolution. The focus is on systems with two to three crops grown per year, mainly double- and triple-crop rice monoculture and rice-wheat systems, which account for about 50% of the global rice supply. Older LTEs, usually single rice crop systems, exist in temperate regions such as Japan (Matsuo et al., 1976), but are not included in this study.

Perhaps the first evidence of a yield decline in rice–rice systems of the tropics dates back to 1979, when F.N. Ponnamperuma presented data showing trends of declining maximum yields at a rate of −125 to −450 kg ha−1 per year in cultivar trials conducted at IRRI during 1966–1978 (Ponnamperuma, 1979). Flinn et al. (1982) and Flinn and De Datta (1984) also found evidence of declining yields, especially at IRRI (International Rice Research Institute), but also at some other LTEs elsewhere in the Philippines. Cassman and Pingali (1995) summarized these results and extended the analysis to include more LTEs at these and other sites. Their results showed statistically significant yield declines in six of seven LTE data sets at IRRI. In data sets at Philippine LTEs outside of IRRI, yield declines occurred in three of ten cases.

In 1971–1972, two LTEs with rice–rice cropping were established in the All India Coordinated Research Project (AICRP) on Long-Term Fertilizer Experiments (Nambiar and Ghosh, 1984). Cassman and Pingali (1995) estimated yield trends for the period 1972 to 1981 at these two rice–rice experiments from a published graph, but without access to the raw data. They concluded that there were statistically significant yield declines in both the wet (WS) and dry (DS) seasons at an experiment in Hyderabad, and a statistically significant yield decline in the WS only at Bhubaneswar. However, the experiment at Hyderabad was often affected by water shortages and was eventually terminated because of these problems. A more recent analysis of the experiment at Bhubaneswar with data until 1994 did not find a yield decline in the treatments with the highest fertilizer input (Sahoo et al., 1998). Tan et al. (1995) reported a statistically significant yield decline in the WS, but a statistically significant yield increase in the DS in a rice–rice LTE in the Mekong Delta.

Several authors have analyzed yield trends in long-term rice-wheat experiments. An AICRP rice-wheat-cowpea LTE at Pantnagar, Uttar Pradesh, was established in 1971 on a virgin Mollisol. Yields of rice declined from high initial levels, but there was no substantial decline in wheat yields (Nand Ram, 1998). No statistical analysis was reported. In a rice-wheat LTE at Masoda, Uttar Pradesh, yield declines were reported for wheat (−62 kg ha−1 per year) and rice (−25 kg ha−1 per year), but trend lines were fitted using three-year moving averages of yields and no significance testing was reported (Yadav et al., 1998). Brar et al. (1998), Singh et al. (1988) and Regmi (1994) also reported yield declines in the rice phase of long-term rice-wheat experiments in India and Nepal, mostly caused by depletion of soil nutrients, but with no thorough statistical analysis.

Given the large number of long-term experiments in Asia, the available evidence in the literature regarding trends of grain yield under intensive rice cropping is insufficient and overly focused on experiments at IRRI. It is also unclear whether yield declines are more common in experiments where yields are initially high. If true, it might indicate a lack of sustainability of intensive rice cropping at the higher yield levels that will be needed to meet future rice production needs. In this paper, two questions will be addressed. First, how widespread are statistically significant yield declines in LTEs conducted in tropical and subtropical Asia? Second, is the magnitude of the yield decline inversely correlated with initial yields in the experiment? The extent of yield or productivity declines in farmers’ fields is beyond the scope of this paper.

Section snippets

Long-term experiment data

The data used for this analysis come from 30 LTEs with rice–rice and rice-wheat cropping systems conducted at 24 different sites in China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia, and they represent a wide variety of soil types (Table 1, Table 2). These LTEs represent all the experiments for which we were able to obtain data sets of at least nine years. It should be noted that there are other long-term experiments of sufficient duration for which we were unable to

Yield trends in rice–rice experiments

In the DS, only two of the 21 data sets from the 15 sites outside of IRRI showed declining yield trends that were statistically different from zero at a 5% level of significance or less (Table 3, Fig. 1). Eight of these 21 data sets showed positive yield trends, with one being statistically different from zero (Omon-LTFE, +4.63% per year). In contrast, all three DS experiments at IRRI had statistically significant yield declines ranging from −1.45 to −1.61% per year. For example, the total

Conclusions

During 10 to 30 years of intensive rice cropping, yields in the most favorable climatic season have remained stable in many LTEs conducted outside of IRRI, mostly at yield levels of 4 to 7 Mg ha−1 with recommended rates of N, P and K applied. Yield declines in the less favorable climatic season (WS) were more abundant than those in the more favorable season (DS), but only a small number of these declines in either season outside of IRRI were statistically significant. There was an inverse

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the valuable contributions made by many researchers conducting the long-term experiments, helping us to obtain data, or providing comments on an earlier draft of this paper, including S.K. De Datta, K.G. Cassman, D. Olk, J.P. Descalsota, J. Alcantara, E. Laureles, and J.K. Ladha (IRRI), E.M. Imperial (BIARC), J.B. Bajita (PhilRice), Djafar Baco, R. Le Cerff, and R. Mufran (Maros and Lanrang), Li Jiakang and Liang Guoqing (Soil & Fertilizer Institute, Chinese Academy

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