Rotation of Triticale and Sweet Sorghum Improves Saline-Alkali Soil and Increases Productivity in a Saline Soil

ABSTRACT

Soil salinization significantly restricts crop yield, animal foraging, and biomass production for biofuels. Identifying an efficient farming system to mitigate these concerns has become a major research focus. The present study addresses the potential of rotating triticale and sweet sorghum at various planting densities to alleviate soil salt stress, enhance production, improve agronomic characteristics, and boost soil microbial communities in a saline agricultural environment in East China. Several indicators in 2017 and 2018. Results show that triticale and sweet sorghum planting significantly decreased soil salt contents compared to bare land plots. Multiple agronomic traits were measured for each planting density. For triticale, a density of 180 × 10⁴ plants ha⁻¹ showed the best plant height, tiller number per plant, yield, and lodging rate; for sweet sorghum, a density of 7 × 10⁴ plants/ha showed the best plant height, yield, and lodging rate. High-density planting of triticale (180, 260, 320 × 10⁴ plants/ha) and sweet sorghum (7, 8, 9 × 10⁴ plants/ha) was associated with high counts of bacteria, Actinomycetes, and salt-tolerant Actinomycetes. However, planting density had no significant effect on the counts of fungi or salt-tolerant bacteria. Redundancy Discriminant Analysis (RDA) showed that plant height, yield, lodging rate, bacteria, salt-tolerant bacteria, Actinomycetes, and salt-tolerant Actinomycetes were negatively correlated with soil salinity, while tiller number per plant and stem thickness were positively correlated with soil salinity. In conclusion, a rotation system of triticale and sweet sorghum with planting densities of 180 × 10⁴ and 7 × 10⁴ plants/ha, respectively was established to improve and make full use of saline soil.

KEYWORDS:

• Crop rotation
• soil salinity
• sweet sorghum
• the Yellow River Delta
• triticale

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/10.1080/00103624.2022.2137181

Authors contribution statement

Mingjing Zhang and Yun Liu wrote this manuscript; Yanlu Liu and Yang Zhao performed experiments; Mingjing Zhang and Yun Liu collected data, carried out all analyses and were involved in preparing figures; Fang Yuan and Min Chen conceptualized the idea. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Shandong Provincial “Bohai Granary” Science and Technology Demonstration Project [2019BHLC004], Agricultural Variety Improvement Project of Shandong Province [2019LZGC009] and the major projects of science and technology in Shandong province [2017CXGC0311], and the Program for Scientific Research Innovation Team in Colleges and Universities of Shandong Province.