Effects of Tillage Practices on Water Consumption, Water Use Efficiency and Grain Yield in Wheat Field

Water shortage is a serious issue threatening the sustainable development of agriculture in the North China Plain, with the winter wheat （Triticum aestivum L.） as its largest water-consuming crop. The effects of tillage practices on the water consumption and water use efifciency （WUE） of wheat under high-yield conditions using supplemental irrigation based on testing soil moisture dynamic change were examined in this study. This experiment was conducted from 2007 to 2010, with ifve tillage practice treatments, namely, strip rotary tillage （SR）, strip rotary tillage after subsoiling （SRS）, rotary tillage （R）, rotary tillage after subsoiling （RS）, and plowing tillage （P）. The results showed that in the SRS and RS treatments the total water and soil water consumptions were 11.81, 25.18%and 12.16, 14.75%higher than those in SR and R treatments, respectively. The lowest ratio of irrigation consumption to total water consumption in the SRS treatment was 18.53 and 21.88%for the 2008-2009 and 2009-2010 growing seasons, respectively. However, the highest percentage of water consumption was found in the SRS treatment from anthesis to maturity. No signiifcant difference was found between the WUE of the lfag leaf at the later iflling stage in the SRS and RS treatments, but the lfag leaf WUE at these stages were higher than those of other treatments. The SRS and RS treatments exhibited the highest grain yield （9 573.76 and 9 507.49 kg ha-1 for 3-yr average） with no signiifcant difference between the two treatments, followed by P, R and SR treatments. But the SRS treatment had the highest WUE. Thus, the 1-yr subsoiling tillage, plus 2 yr of strip rotary planting operation may be an efifcient measure to increase wheat yield and WUE.

Effects of rotor and stator geometry on dissolution process and power consumption in jet-flow high shear mixers

The jet-flow high shear mixer(JF-HSM)is a new type of intensified equipment with special configurations of the rotor and the stator.The mass transfer property and power consumption were studied in the solid-liquid system for a series of JF-HSMs involving different configuration parameters,such as rotor diameter,rotor blade inclination,rotor blade bending direction,stator diameter,and stator bottom opening diameter.The flow characteristics were examined by computational fluid dynamic simulations.Results indicate that the turbulent power consumption of the JF-HSM is affected by the change in rotor blade inclination and stator bottom opening.With the increase in the shear head size and the change in the rotor into a backward-curved blade,the solid-liquid mass transfer rate can be remarkably increased under the same input power.Dimensionless correlations for the mass transfer coefficient and power consumption were obtained to guide the scale-up design and selection of such a new type of equipment to intensify the overall mixing efficiency.