Research on yields estimation and yields increasing potential by irrigation of spring maize in Northeast China
The rain-fed agriculture dominates the agricultural production in Northeast China, which leads to the drought risk for crops growing. To assess the yields and necessity of irrigation for maize in the Three Northeast Provinces of China, the calibrated and validated WOrld FOod STudies (WOFOST) model was used to estimate maize yieldss in the regional scale after it was optimized by assimilating leaf area index retrieved from remote sensing data based on Shuffled Complex Evolution (SCE-UA) algorithm. Then the gaps between potential and water limiting yieldss (the irrigation was equal to zero) were computed and mapped to detect the area where the crop irrigation improvement was demanded. The presented result could support the decision from government on the crop management which suggested that crops in the northwest of Liaoning Province, the west of Jilin Province and the southwest of Heilongjiang Province lacked the irrigation most.