Determining the plant critical saturated water accumulation curve in maize

Water scarcity is one of the major factors limiting crop growth and productivity. Judicious water management reduces the application of irrigation water and increases grain yield, farm profits, and water use efficiency. The assessment of crop water status is the key to in-season irrigation scheduling. The plant diagnostic approach has the potential to assess the in-season crop water status for optimizing crop water use. For this purpose, a series of field and rainout shelter experiments with varying amounts of irrigation water (0–275 mm for field and 0–315 mm for rainout shelter experiments) and planting densities (6–8 ×104 plants ha−1) using seven maize cultivars were conducted from the 2017–2020 growing seasons in North China Plain to determine and validate the plant critical saturated water accumulation (SWA) curve during the vegetative growth period of maize. The result showed that the plant dry mass (DM) and the SWA ranged from 0.07 to 8.22 t ha−1 and 0.63–59.06 t ha−1 during the vegetative growth period of maize, respectively. The plant DM and SWA increased with the increase in irrigation amount. However, plant DM and plant SWA showed non-significant differences under non-water-limiting conditions. An allometric relationship between plant DM and plant SWA was used to develop the plant critical SWA curve (SWA = 8.26DM0.89, R2 =0.98**). A plant water diagnosis index (WDI) was then derived using the critical SWA curve to quantitatively assess the in-season water status of maize. The WDI increased with the increase of irrigation amount and ranged from 0.72 to 1.26 with a value of 1, indicating an optimum plant water status. The newly developed curve could diagnose and categorize the water-limiting and non-water-limiting plant water status and can be employed for precision irrigation management during maize cultivation.