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. 2019 Aug 20:15:96.
doi: 10.1186/s13007-019-0481-1. eCollection 2019.

In situ evaluation of stalk lodging resistance for different maize (Zea mays L.) cultivars using a mobile wind machine

Weiliang Wen #  1   2 , Shenghao Gu #  1   2 , Boxiang Xiao  1   2 , Chuanyu Wang  1   2 , Jinglu Wang  1   2 , Liming Ma  1   2 , Yongjian Wang  1   2 , Xianju Lu  1   2 , Zetao Yu  1   2 , Ying Zhang  1   2 , Jianjun Du  1   2 , Xinyu Guo  1   2
Affiliations

In situ evaluation of stalk lodging resistance for different maize (Zea mays L.) cultivars using a mobile wind machine

Weiliang Wen et al. Plant Methods. .

Abstract

Background: Stalk lodging is an impediment to improving profitability and production efficiency in maize. Lodging resistance, a comprehensive indicator to appraise genotypes, requires both characterization of mechanical properties in laboratory and investigation of lodging percentage in field. However, in situ characterization of maize lodging resistance still remains poor. The aim of this study was to develop an indicator, named cumulative lodging index (CLI), based on lodging percentages at different wind speeds for evaluating lodging resistance for different maize cultivars, and to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of this method.

Results: Different cultivars showed different patterns of lodging percentage along with wind speeds. The failure wind speed (FWS) for maize ranged between 16 and 30 m s-1 across cultivars. The CLI differed between maize cultivars and showed favorable reliability (i.e. nRMSE of 5.38%). Mechanical properties of the third internode did not vary significantly between cultivars. Significant differences in the reduction index (RI) of wind speed sheltered by maize canopy were found between cultivars.

Conclusion: Our findings implied that mobile wind machine is powerful in reproducing wind disaster that induce crop lodging. The newly-built CLI was demonstrated to be a more robust indicator than mechanical properties, FWS, and RI when evaluating lodging resistance in terms of both reliability and resolution. This study offers a new perspective for evaluating in situ lodging resistance of crops, and provides technical support for accurate identification of lodging-resistant phenotypic traits.

Keywords: Cumulative lodging index; Failure wind speed; Lodging resistance; Maize (Zea mays L.); Mechanical properties; Wind machine.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing interestsThe authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A three-dimensional diagram of wind machine (a), the main structure from side view (b), and the fan (c). The brown part in the diagram represents solid ground, and blue represents the rails. The red part denotes the high-speed fan, and the yellow denotes main structure including a settling chamber and a contraction area
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Measured wind speed at the outlet of wind machine, at the top, middle, and bottom layers of the holder when it was fixed at 2 m (a), 4 m (b), 6 m (c), and 7 m (d) away from the outlet. The red line represents an estimated FWS of 19 m s−1 from literature
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Lodging percentage at different wind speeds for six cultivars in 2016 (a for JK665, b for JK968, c for XY335, d for XD20, e for ZD958, and f for JD38) and three cultivars in 2017 (g for XD20, h for ZD958, and i for JD38). The lodging percentage at “> 30” means that none of the plants fell down even though a maximum wind speed of 30 m s−1 was generated in each experiment
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Quantified lodging resistance at different generated wind speeds for six cultivars in 2016 (a) and three cultivars 2017 (b). Red, blue, green, purple, orange and yellow symbols represent JD38, JK665, JK968, XD20, XY335 and ZD958 respectively
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Measured wind speeds at the outlet of wind machine (black points in a and b), at the middle layer (a), and at the top layer of the holder (b) for different cultivars and the corresponding reduction index (c for the middle and d for the top). Red, blue, green, purple, orange and yellow represent JD38, JK665, JK968, XD20, XY335, and ZD958 respectively. Absence of shared letters denotes a statistically significant difference (P = 0.05) between cultivars
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Correlation coefficients between CLI, mechanical properties and phenotypic traits. CLI, YM, MBL, PH, LIA, EH, MTD, PAD, EL, LN and EN represent cumulative lodging index, Young’s modulus, maximum bending load, plant height, leaf inclination angle, ear height, maximum transverse displacement, plant azimuthal deviation, ear length, leaf number, ear number
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Precipitation (a, b) and daily maximum wind speed (c, d) during growing season in 2016 (a, c) and 2017 (b, d) in Haidian. The triangles denote the date when wind machine tests for maize were performed
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
Schematic illustration of the experimental setup in 2016. Six cultivars, each of which had three rows, were planted with an identical row distance of 60 cm. Solid lines indicate two rows of maize for each cultivar that were tested and dashed lines indicate one row for backup and preventing targeted plants to be lodged during the test for the neighboring cultivar. The wind machine can be moved along west–east direction along four lead rails. Orange, blue, yellow, red, black and purple represent ZD958, JD38, XD20, XY335, JK665 and JK968
Fig. 9
Fig. 9
A photograph extracted from side-view video of an entire wind machine test for maize in field on 9 September 2016. Rows of maize for different cultivars were grown between the outlet of the wind machine and the holder for nine anemometers. Red dots indicate the positions of anemometers
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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