Coupling Rice with Fish for Sustainable Yields and Soil Fertility in China

doi:10.1016/j.rsci.2020.04.001

Abstract

Liang Guo, Liangliang Hu, Lufeng Zhao, Xiaoyu Shi, Zijun Ji, Lilian Ding, Weizheng Ren, Jian Zhang, Jianjun Tang, Xin Chen. Coupling Rice with Fish for Sustainable Yields and Soil Fertility in China[J]. Rice Science, 2020, 27(3): 175-179.

Figures/Tables 7

Supplemental Table 1. Policies and activities of Chinese government concerning RFSs since 2010.

Year	Government department	Policy/activity
2011	MOARA	RFS was listed as a key direction for exploration in fisheries in the 12th Five-Year Plan
2012	MOARA	A special nonprofit research and demonstration project, ‘The rice-aquaculture combination system and its technology (2012-2016)’, was initiated
2013	MOARA	A nationwide network of RFS demonstration sites (2013-2017) in the main rice-planting area began to be established
2015	GOSC	RFS was listed as an important way to develop eco-agriculture in the document ‘Promoting the Conversion of Agricultural Production Mode’
	MOARA	Sixteen new RFS demonstration farms were added to the network established in 2013
	MOARA, MST, MEE and NDRC	RFS was listed as a long-term strategy for sustainable agriculture in the document ‘the National Long-tern Plan for Agriculture Sustainable Development (2015-2030)’
2017-2018	GOSC	RFS was emphasized in the Document No. 1 of the Central Government of China each year

Fig. 1. Locations of farms and rice yields.A, Location of the 86 surveyed farms and field experiments. Dots indicate the locations of the surveyed farms, and pointers indicate the locations of the field experiments. B-E, Rice yields from the 86 surveyed farms. F-I, Rice yields and stability index values of rice yield (insert) from the four field experiments. Stability indexes of rice yield was calculated as S = μ / δ, where μ is the mean yield for a time period and δ is its temporal standard deviation over the same time interval. RM, Rice monoculture; RFS, Rice-fish system.Values are Mean ± SE. * and ** indicate significant differences at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively. ‘ns’ indicates non-significant differences at the 0.05 level.

Supplemental Table 2 Background information on 86 surveyed farms (Mean ± SE).

System	No. of farms	Description	Farm size (hm²)	Refuge (%)	No. of pairs of fields	No. of soil samples
Rice-carp	34	Carp was co-cultured with rice simultaneously within a field	28 ± 5	7.50 ± 0.37	212	127
Rice-crab	24	Crab was co-cultured with rice simultaneously within a field	50 ± 12	5.15 ± 0.31	144	54
Rice-crayfish	16	Rice was planted after crayfish was harvested in a field in a year	44 ± 11	10.48 ± 0.81	108	46
Rice-turtle	12	Turtle was co-cultured with rice simultaneously within a field	40 ± 12	9.36 ± 0.41	72	34

Supplemental Fig. 1. Daily air temperatures at four sites of field experiments in July and August of 2012-2018. The horizontal lines are drawn at 37 °C. Solid peaks indicate the days with maximum temperatures > 37°C. Shadings indicate the period of young panicle differentiation of rice.

Fig. 2. Fish yield, N-input and soil fertility in this study.A, Fish yields from 86 surveyed farms. Box boundaries represent the 25th and 75th percentiles, the horizontal line is the median, and the whiskers mark the minimum and the maximum values. Dots denote the mean values. B, Fish yields from the field experiments. C, Fertilizer-nitrogen input in the 86 surveyed farms. D-F, Soil fertility in RFSs and RMs in the 86 surveyed farms. G-I, Soil fertility in RFSs and RMs in the field experiments. Values are Mean ± SE. * and ** indicate significant differences at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels, respectively. ‘ns’ indicates non-significant differences at the 0.05 level. In G to I, the means from left to right are for seven consecutive years (2012 to 2018).

Supplemental Fig. 2. Feed-N and fertilizer-N inputs in four types of RFSs and fertilizer-N input in corresponding RM in field survey. RM, Rice monoculture; RSF, Rice-fish system.Data are from 154-paired samples (rice-carp, n = 10; rice-crab, n = 12; rice-crayfish, n = 7; rice-turtle, n = 4). Values are Mean ± SE. Asterisks and ‘ns’ indicate significant and non-significant differences between RM and RSF at the 0.05 level, respectively.

Supplemental Fig. 3. Soil total reducing substances in RFS and RM fields/plots of four experiments. RM, Rice monoculture; RSF, Rice-fish system.Data were from the soil samples collected in 2018. Values are Mean ± SE. Asterisks and ‘ns’ indicate significant and non-significant differences between RM and RSF at the 0.05 level, respectively.

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