Plastic film mulching amplifies yield resilience and stabilizes water use efficiency of winter wheat across wet and dry years on the semi-arid Loess Plateau.
BACKGROUND Mulching is usually evaluated on multiyear average yield, which hides how its benefit varies with rainfall. A three-year split-plot experiment at Tianshui, Gansu, on the semi-arid Loess Plateau crossed four fertilization levels (no fertilizer, CK; sheep manure, M; mineral, NPK; manure plus NPK, MNPK) with th...