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Acta Prataculturae Sinica ›› 2015, Vol. 24 ›› Issue (10): 139-148.DOI: 10.11686/cyxb2014437

• Orginal Article • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Effects of sowing time on yield and quality of Codonopsis pilosula seedlings

ZHAO Ya-Lan1, CHEN Yuan1,*, GUO Feng-Xia1, GUO Zhi-Jun2, LIU Xi-Quan1   

  1. 1.Gansu Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic & Germplasm Enhancement, Gansu Provincial Key Laboratory of Good Agricultural Production for Traditional Chinese Medicines, Provincial Key Laboratory of Aridland Crop Science, College of Agronomy, College of Life Sciences and Technology, Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou 730070, China;
    2. Gansu Engineering Laboratory of Resource Reservation and Utilization for Characteristic Medical Plants, Gansu Cultivated Engineering and Technology Research Center of Standardization and Traceability for Characteristic Chinese Medicine, Longxi Zhongtian Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, Dingxi 748100, China
  • Online:2015-10-20 Published:2015-10-20

Abstract: To determine the most appropriate time to plant Codonopsis pilosula, an experiment comparing winter and spring sowing was conducted. Yield and quality of seedlings and soil water content were measured regularly after both sowing times. The results showed that the climatic condition in Longxi County is suitable for cultivating C. pilosula seedlings. Under both winter and spring conditions, the pattern of seedling emergence followed the typical ‘S’ curve which was able to be modelled using a logistic regression. Higher soil moisture in the 0-20 cm soil layer in the winter sown field resulted in seedling emergence 6 days earlier compared with spring sowing and yield was increased by 47.8% with good seedling quality. In contrast, the emergence rate of seedlings in the spring-sowing field was 27.3% greater than winter sown but the seedlings were small and of poor quality. In conclusion, the seedling cultivating sown in winter was of great significance to avoid the spring drought, suggesting that the seedling cultivating methods sown winter and spring should be adopted in proportion in order to reduce the seed ablastemic risk when sown in spring caused by the severe drought tress. It is worth noting that when cultivating the plant seedlings whether sown in winter or spring the keeping-moisture measures should be promptly taken after sowing and the wheat straw is the perfect for the coverage.