In the northwestern Loess Plateau of China, low precipitation results in poor crop yields, with a great fluctuation from year to year. The adoption of gravel–sand mulching has shown improvements in the growth of crops such as watermelon. The ridge and furrow rainwater harvest system (RFRHS)...

In semi-arid areas, crop growth is greatly limited by water. Amount of available water in soil can be increased by surface mulching and other soil management practices. Field experiments were conducted in 2005 and 2006 at Gaolan, Gansu, China, to determine the influence of ridge and furrow...

Gravel and sand mulch is an effective practice in conserving soil and moisture. However, the proportion of different particle size in this kind of mulch layer is an important factor to be considered in order to obtain optimal results from this practice. From 2005 to 2007, a series of experiments...

Three field experiments located at Yuhang (YH), Changshu (CS), and Jiaxing (JX) Agricultural Research Stations in the Taihu region of China were conducted to elucidate ammonia volatilization (AV) during rice growing seasons through 'zero-drainage water management', combined with sound...