Effects of inorganic amendments, rice cultivars and cultivation methods on greenhouse gas emissions and rice productivity in a subtropical paddy field

With the rapidly increasing demand of rice globally, there is an urgent need to develop management strategies to improve the yields of rice crops, while at the same time minimize the possible adverse climatic impacts arising from greenhouse gas emissions from paddy fields. In this study, we investigated the influence of amendment application (steel slag and sulfate), rice cultivars (super rice cultivar, Qiuyou 6, and common rice cultivar, Hesheng 10), and cultivation methods (hand cultivation, machine cultivation, throwing cultivation) on rice yield, soil properties, as well as CH4 and N2O emissions in a subtropical paddy field in southeast China. When compared to the controls, mean CH4 emissions were significantly lower in the steel slag amendment and sulfate amendment plots by 66.1% and 23.1%, respectively, but significantly higher in the machine cultivation plots by 26.6% (P