Higher rice yield and lower greenhouse gas emissions with cattle manure amendment is achieved by alternate wetting and drying

ABSTRACT

Climate change and water scarcity threaten the sustainability of rice production systems. Alternate wetting and drying (AWD) is a promising option to reduce methane (CH₄) emission from irrigated paddy fields. However, its effect on rice yield remains to be clarified. Organic amendment can increase rice yield but may also increase CH₄ emission. We therefore hypothesized that the combination of AWD with organic amendment could both increase rice yield and decrease CH₄ emission. We carried out field experiments in six consecutive rice seasons during 2019 − 2022 in Central Java, Indonesia. We examined the effect of water management (continuous flooding [CF] and AWD) with (+M) and without (−M) the amendment of cattle manure as a locally available organic matter on rice growth and yield and the emissions of CH₄ and nitrous oxide (N₂O). AWD significantly (p < 0.05) decreased CH₄ emission by 29% but marginally (p < 0.1) increased N₂O emission by 10% relative to CF. There was no significant effect of AWD alone on rice yield. AWD significantly increased water productivity (the ratio of rice yield to irrigated water volume) by 50%. Cattle manure amendment significantly increased CH₄ emission by 12% and rice yield by 5% but did not affect N₂O emission. The combination effect of AWD+M relative to CF−M (control) was additive and resulted in a 7% increase in rice yield, a 19% decrease in the global warming potential (GWP) of CH₄ + N₂O emissions during both growing and fallow periods, and a 24% decrease in yield-scaled GWP. Our results indicated that the combination of AWD with cattle manure amendment would be a promising means to increase rice yield while reducing total soil greenhouse gas emission from irrigated rice paddies.

KEYWORDS:

• Global warming
• methane
• nitrous oxide
• organic amendment
• water management

Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Khin Thawda Win (Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences, National Agriculture and Food Research Organization, Japan) for her support of soil analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/00380768.2023.2298775.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), Japan through the International Research Project “Development of comprehensive rice cultivation technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Asia” (a research subject in MAFF’s Strategic Project-research Promotion Project “Development of greenhouse gas reduction technologies in the agricultural sector through international collaboration”).