Study on Water—Preserving Effects of Mulching for Dryland Winter Wheat in Loess Tableland

Focused on the rainfall characteristics and the reality of agricultural production in the loess ta-bleland, and based on previous results, new patterns for dryland winter wheat production, in which the em-phasis was put on the film mulch with obvious water-preserving advantage, were designed to make effective useof rainfall. The results showed that the technique of the double mulch of film plus straw in summer fallow pe-riod can collect the rainfall in this period to the utmost extent and over 73.2 % of it can be stored in the soil,which is 108.4 mm more than that of conventional tillage. Furthermore, it can not only preserve water storedin soil in summer fallow, but also collect the rainfall in the growth period as much as possible by using thetechnique of making ridges plus film mulching and furrow sowing. So the patterns, which can greatly increaseboth the soil moisture and wheat yield, are the best choice for making full utilization of the rainfall and achie-ving a high and stable yield in the dryland wheat production of the loess tableland.