Adaptive irrigation scheduling for winter wheat under drought conditions in North China

In order to relieve the water shortage for irrigation in North China, an adaptive real-time irrigation scheduling based on weather forecast and drought evaluation was developed. First, drought degree was evaluated into five ranks in crop growing seasons, and then the irrigation threshold was decided based on the chosen drought evaluation indexes, finally using field water balance principle and soil moisture simulation technology, an adaptive real-time irrigation scheduling was established to adapt to climate changes and actual rainfall based on winter wheat filed experiments from 2011 to 2014 in this study. Results showed that the irrigation water depths in 2013-2014 provided by the traditional irrigation schedule was 266 mm, which was much higher than that provided by adaptive real-time irrigation schedule (177 mm). Though the yield and water productivity provided by adaptive real-time irrigation were not the highest among different irrigation treatments, it is more suitable for the application adaptive real-time irrigation in North China to cope with the limited water resources of the irrigation districts.