Experiments were carried out in 1994 - 1998 to study crop rotation and its effects on crop water consumption characteristics of field with sandy chestnut soil in the Plateau of north Hebei Province. Five crops including spring wheat, oat, pea, flax and potato were examined. There was little difference in field water consumption among the crops during the growing season. WUE varied significantly in a range of 1. 347 - 11.177kg · ha-1· mm-1 among crops and 11.44％ - 46.66％ among previous crops. It was pointed out that the land equivalent ratio (LER) can be used as an index to evaluate the biological effects of crop rotation comprehensively. The 2 - 4 year crop rotation patterns with higher LER were estimated in the paper.
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