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Review
. 2021 Feb 19:12:634898.
doi: 10.3389/fpls.2021.634898. eCollection 2021.

How Does the Waterlogging Regime Affect Crop Yield? A Global Meta-Analysis

Li-Xin Tian  1 , Yu-Chuan Zhang  1 , Peng-Liang Chen  1 , Fei-Fei Zhang  1 , Jing Li  2 , Feng Yan  3 , Yang Dong  3 , Bai-Li Feng  1
Affiliations
Review

How Does the Waterlogging Regime Affect Crop Yield? A Global Meta-Analysis

Li-Xin Tian et al. Front Plant Sci. .

Abstract

Waterlogging, an abiotic stress, severely restricts crop yield in various parts of the world. Thus, we conducted a meta-analysis of 2,419 comparisons from 115 studies to comprehensively evaluate the overall change in crop yield induced by waterlogging in the global region. The results suggested that waterlogging obviously decreased crop yield by 32.9% on average, compared with no waterlogging, which was a result of a reduced 1,000-grain weight (13.67%), biomass (28.89%), plant height (10.68%), net photosynthetic rate (P n , 39.04%), and leaf area index (LAI, 22.89%). The overall effect of a waterlogging regime on crop yield is related to the crop type; the crop yield reduction varied between wheat (25.53%) and cotton (59.95%), with an overall average value of 36.81% under field conditions. In addition, we also found that compared with no waterlogging, waterlogging in the reproductive growth stage (41.90%) caused a greater yield reduction than in the vegetative growth stage (34.75%). Furthermore, decreases in crop yield were observed with an extension in the waterlogging duration; the greatest decreases in crop yield occurred at 15 < D ≤ 28 (53.19 and 55.96%) under field and potted conditions, respectively. Overall, the results of this meta-analysis showed that waterlogging can decrease crop yield and was mainly affected by crop type, growth stage, and experimental duration.

Keywords: crop type; grain yield; growth stage; meta-analysis; waterlogging duration.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Global distribution of waterlogging experiments used in the meta-analysis.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Percentage changes in agronomic traits and photosynthetic characteristics under waterlogging compared to no waterlogging. LAI, leaf area index; Pn, photosynthetic rate. The number of observations is displayed in parentheses. The horizontal bar indicates the 95% confidence interval (CI). An error bar that does not overlap 0 indicates a significant increase at P < 0.05.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Grain yield response to waterlogging compared with no waterlogging in different crop types: (A) field trials; (B) pot trials. The number of observations is displayed in parentheses. The horizontal bar indicates the 95% confidence interval (CI). An error bar that does not overlap 0 indicates a significant increase at P < 0.05.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Grain yield response to waterlogging compared with no waterlogging in different growth stages. The number of observations is displayed in parentheses. VS, vegetative stage; RS, reproductive stage. The horizontal bar indicates the 95% confidence interval (CI). An error bar that does not overlap 0 indicates a significant increase at P < 0.05.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Grain yield response to waterlogging compared with no waterlogging for different experimental durations. The number of observations is displayed in parentheses. The horizontal bar indicates the 95% confidence interval (CI). An error bar that does not overlap 0 indicates a significant increase at P < 0.05. (A) Field trials; (B) pot trials.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Pearson correlation coefficients between observed yield reduction and experimental duration.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
Maize, rice, and wheat yield responses to waterlogging compared with no waterlogging in experiments with different durations: (A) field trials; (B) pot trials. The number of observations is displayed in parentheses. The horizontal bar indicates the 95% confidence interval (CI). An error bar that does not overlap 0 indicates a significant increase at P < 0.05.
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