Yi Yang, Masayasu Maki, Rongling Ye, Daiki Saito, Thanyaluck Nontasri, Mallika Srisutham, Supranee Sritumboon, Somsak Sukchan, Koshi Yoshida, Kazuo Oki, Koki Homma
Received 2021/09/10, Accepted 2021/10/28, Published 2022/01/26

Yi Yang¹⁾, Masayasu Maki²⁾, Rongling Ye¹⁾, Daiki Saito¹⁾, Thanyaluck Nontasri³⁾, Mallika Srisutham³⁾, Supranee Sritumboon⁴⁾, Somsak Sukchan⁴⁾, Koshi Yoshida⁵⁾, Kazuo Oki⁶⁾⁷⁾, Koki Homma¹⁾

1) Graduate School of Agricultural Science, Tohoku University, Japan
2) Faculty of Food and Agricultural Sciences, Fukushima University, Japan
3) Faculty of Agriculture, Khon Kaen University, Thailand
4) Land Development Department, Thailand
5) Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan
6) Faculty of Engineering, Kyoto University of Advanced Sciences, Japan
7) Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Future expansion of salt-damaged areas is anticipated in Northeast Thailand. We conducted a field investigation of paddy fields from 2016 to 2019 in Ban Phai district, Khon Kaen province in Northeast Thailand to evaluate yearly changes in the effect of salinity damage on rice production. The investigation area was classified into severely salt-affected areas (2^nd of 5 classes) based on the definition used in Thailand. Since salinity severely damages rice production, rice cultivation was abandoned in some fields, although some were still planted. The soil electrical conductivity (EC) in the rice-planted paddy fields changed yearly in association with the amount of precipitation. The effect of the difference in EC on rice yield was moderate, suggesting that rice yield was mediated by surface water. Some areas in the abandoned fields did not have any vegetation, and quite high soil EC values were observed. The non-vegetated areas evaluated based on yearly unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) images changed partly due to the amount of precipitation. However, some non-vegetated areas decreased in contrast to the decrease in precipitation, probably because of the effect of groundwater. Although the continuous expansion of severely salt-damaged areas was not observed, the monitoring of salinity levels is recommended for the future.

[Full Text]

Copyright (c) 2022 The Author(s) CC-BY 4.0