Climatic Suitability And Yield Gap Analysis For Maize In Hubei Province

Understanding climatic suitability to crop and yield gaps is a very interesting topic which is essential to modern day maize production.This study assessed the climatic suitability and yield gap analysis of hybrid maize Zhengdan958,maize in three dominant maize production regions,Hubei Province,China.The studied maize production regions include:Low hilly and plain production region?HP?,Northern humpy ground region?NH?and the western mountainous region?WM?.Using extracted meteorological data of 26meteorological stations between 1967-2016,suitability of temperature,rainfall,sunshine and climate were evaluated at different growth stages of 3 types of maize,being spring maize?SpM?,Summer Maize?SuM?and autumn maize?AuM?.Then,Hybrid-maize model was used in maize yield potential and yield gap analysis.In all analysis,one popular maize variety,Zhengdan958,was used as the study object.Some parameters in calculations were obtained from the 2-yr field experiments with 8 sowing dates of Zhengdan958,which were conducted in 2012 and 2013 at an experimental farm of the Huazhong Agricultural University in the town of Huaqiao,Hubei Province.The results are shown as the following.1.Climatic resources and stress among different maize production regions varied throughout growth period.Annual accumulated effective temperature?AAT?at different regions shows that HP region?3136 AAT?.d?had the largest average across the 3production regions with significant trend.However,AAT at NH region?2943 AAT?.d?and WM region?2939 AAT?.d?exhibited increase across recent 50 years with the significant tendency rate?Tr?and the start sowing date was significantly brought forward.Killing degree days?KDD?was most highly relative at summer maize?219 KDD?mainly at each region with spring maize receiving average KDD and autumn maize with least.Rainfall was prevalent at HP region with spring season maize receiving the largest amount of rainfall across the 3 regions.There are more drought occurrence frequency at silking-milking stage and more waterlogging occurrence frequency at sowing to jointing stage for 3 season maize.At the 3 production regions autumn maize had the most sunshine hours which were largest at HP region.2.For temperature suitability,summer maize(S_?T?0.87:CV4.6%:Tr 0)had most suitability than autumn maize for the whole period across 3 production region.Spring maize received most rainfall among 3 season maize for the 3 regions with total average of R587:CV23.8%:-13.73.Summer maize has less rainfall suitability among 3 season maize.Autumn maize received the most sunshine suitability throughout the 3 regions.It can be noted that sunshine suitability was most suitable at HP region.Spring maize and summer maize portrayed high climatic suitability under the different climatic factors across the 3production regions.Especially at certain stages of growth which was relatively higher than other growth stages.Autumn maize showed low suitability at most regions stating that is not very suitable for growing in that period at the 3 regions.3.The results showed that HP region(3.65 mg.ha^-1)had a lower yield gap than NH region(4.23 mg.ha^-1)and WM region(6.03 mg.ha^-1).HP region was significantly highest with experimental yield(8.62 mg.ha^-1)and farm yield(6.27 mg.ha^-1).NH region had the least experimental yield(7.94 mg.ha^-1)among the 3 regions but the second largest for farm yield(5.09 mg.ha^-1).At WM region,the experimental yield was higher than that of NH region but subsequently lower at farm yields.Yield gaps at HP region were the smallest and had great yields along with NH region which had small margin to HP region.WM region however showed largest yield gaps.Across the 3 regions in Hubei Province,YGM 5.86 mg.ha^-1 was the highest yield gap at each region followed by YGR 5.04mg.ha^-1 then YGE 3.01 mg.ha^-1 with the lowest yield gap.This study shows that HP region has the better climatic suitability and the capacity to produce high yields.The main factor expressing yield gap is the change in climatic suitability and management practices.To adequately narrow the yield gap,proper measures must be put in place with better understanding and applicable practices should be implemented in maize production in Hubei Province.