Ground cover rice production system facilitates soil carbon and nitrogen stocks at regional scale.

Rice production is increasingly challenged by irrigation water scarcity, however covering paddy rice soils with films (ground cover rice production system: GCRPS) can significantly reduce water demand as well as overcome temperature limitations at the beginning of the vegetation period resulting in increased grain yields in colder regions of rice production with seasonal water shortages. It has been speculated that the increased soil aeration and temperature under GCRPS may result in losses of soil organic carbon and nitrogen stocks. Here we report on a regional scale experiment, conducted by sampling paired adjacent Paddy and GCRPS fields at 49 representative sites in the Shiyan region, which is typical for many mountainous areas across China. Parameters evaluated included soil C and N stocks, soil physical and chemical properties, potential carbon mineralization rates, fractions of soil organic carbon and stable carbon isotopic composition of plant leaves. Furthermore, root biomass was quantified at maximum tillering stage at one of our paired sites. Against expectations the study showed that: (1) GCRPS significantly increased soil organic C and N stocks 5-20 years following conversion of production systems, (2) there were no differences between GCRPS and Paddy in soil physical and chemical properties for the various soil depths with the exception of soil bulk density, (3) GCRPS had lower mineralization potential for soil organic C compared with Paddy over the incubation period, (4) GCRPS showed lower δ¹⁵N in the soils and plant leafs indicating less NH₃ volatilization in GCRPS than in Paddy; and (5) GCRPS increased yields and root biomass in all soil layers down to 40 cm depth. Our results suggest that GCRPS is an innovative rice production technique that not only increases yields using less irrigation water, but that it also is environmentally beneficial due to increased soil C and N stocks at regional scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]