ArticleScientific reports2026
Legume cover cropping enhances soil function and yield stability in wheat-maize systems under groundwater overexploitation in the North China Plain.
Article in Scientific reports, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The North China Plain (NCP) is one of China's most important wheat-maize production regions, but the conventional winter wheat-summer maize system relies heavily on groundwater irrigation and high fertilizer inputs, intensifying the conflict between grain production and resource sustainability. Legume cover cropping and intercropping have been proposed as potential strategies to improve resource use and soil health; however, field evidence linking soil water regulation, soil multifunctionality, and yield stability under reduced water and fertilizer inputs remains limited. Here, we conducted a five-year field experiment in a groundwater-overexploited area of the NCP to evaluate four cropping systems: the conventional winter wheat-summer maize system (TWM), a reduced-input winter wheat-summer maize system (WM), wheat-white clover strip intercropping with relay-intercropped maize (CI), and wheat-white clover mixed cropping followed by maize (CM). The results showed that CI improved soil moisture conditions in the wheat strips, whereas CI-C reduced water consumption during the wheat season by 26.2%, 19.3%, and 16.9% compared with TWM, WM, and CM, respectively. CI also enhanced soil nutrient availability and biochemical activity, as indicated by higher contents of alkali-hydrolyzable nitrogen, available phosphorus, available potassium, and soil organic carbon, together with increased soil alkaline phosphatase, urease, and saccharase activities. Consequently, CI-C showed the highest soil multifunctionality index across all sampling periods, while WM consistently showed the lowest values. Yield analysis further revealed that WM reduced wheat and maize yields by 18.6% and 11.3%, respectively, compared with TWM. In contrast, CI increased maize yield by 9.7%, 23.6%, and 16.0% compared with TWM, WM, and CM, respectively, and maintained an annual yield of 18.2 Mg ha⁻¹, comparable to that of TWM. Redundancy analysis indicated that SOC, SAP, SAN, SSC, SUE, SCAT, and ET jointly contributed to yield formation. These findings demonstrate that wheat-white clover strip intercropping with relay-intercropped maize can achieve synergistic improvements in water regulation, soil nutrient activation, soil multifunctionality, and yield stability. This system provides a promising ecological intensification strategy for sustainable wheat-maize production in groundwater-overexploited areas of the NCP.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.