Zhang et al. (2025) Crop Redistribution Increases Regional Production While Reducing Water Deficit, Fertilizer Use, and Production Losses: Evidence from a Multi-Objective Optimization at the County Level in Northeast China

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Identification

• Journal: Agronomy
• Year: 2025
• Date: 2025-09-08
• Authors: Yiming Zhang, Buchun Liu, Rui Han, Huiqing Bai, Enke Liu, Di Chen, Oumeng Qiao, Honglei Che, Xinglin Liu, Long Chen, Noreen Wu
• DOI: 10.3390/agronomy15092148

Research Groups

Not explicitly mentioned in the provided text.

Short Summary

This study quantifies the potential of crop redistribution in Northeast China using a multi-objective optimization approach to enhance grain production while alleviating environmental pressures. The findings reveal significant benefits, including increased crop production, reduced yield losses, decreased water deficit, and lower nitrogen fertilizer application.

Objective

• To systematically assess and quantify the potential of crop redistribution in Northeast China to enhance grain production while alleviating environmental pressures through a multi-objective optimization approach.

Study Configuration

• Spatial Scale: 273 counties in Northeast China
• Temporal Scale: 20 years (2001–2020)

Methodology and Data

• Models used: Multi-objective optimization approach
• Data sources: Annual county-level data (2001–2020) for crop yield, yield losses, water deficit, and nitrogen fertilizer application.

Main Results

• Simultaneous optimization of all objectives resulted in:
  • Crop production increase by 1.70% (2.41 × 10^6 tonnes).
  • Production losses decrease by 2.69% (1.84 × 10^5 tonnes).
  • Water deficit decrease by 6.78% (3.88 × 10^8 cubic metres).
  • Nitrogen fertilizer application decrease by 10.87% (5.41 × 10^7 kilograms).
• The optimized crop redistribution scheme compared to baseline:
  • Rice area increases by 69.58%.
  • Maize area reduces by 12.8%.
  • Soybean area reduces by 54.79%.
• Specific regional changes include increased rice area in northwestern Heilongjiang, eastern Jilin, and most counties in Liaoning, while maize area reduces in most counties except for specific regions in Heilongjiang and Jilin. Soybean area reduces in northern Heilongjiang and Four Eastern Leagues, increasing in western Jilin and most of Liaoning.

Contributions

• Provides a systematic and quantitative assessment of crop redistribution potential in Northeast China using a multi-objective optimization framework.
• Develops a specific crop redistribution scheme that simultaneously addresses grain production enhancement and environmental pressure alleviation (water deficit, nitrogen fertilizer application).
• Highlights the significant benefits achievable through optimized cropping structure at a county level.

Funding

Not explicitly mentioned in the provided text.

Citation

@article{Zhang2025Crop,
  author = {Zhang, Yiming and Liu, Buchun and Han, Rui and Bai, Huiqing and Liu, Enke and Chen, Di and Qiao, Oumeng and Che, Honglei and Liu, Xinglin and Chen, Long and Wu, Noreen},
  title = {Crop Redistribution Increases Regional Production While Reducing Water Deficit, Fertilizer Use, and Production Losses: Evidence from a Multi-Objective Optimization at the County Level in Northeast China},
  journal = {Agronomy},
  year = {2025},
  doi = {10.3390/agronomy15092148},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy15092148}
}