Crops grown in ecologically vulnerable oases are increasingly vulnerable to climate change, a trend that poses a severe threat to the sustainability of agricultural production in arid zones. Clarifying the relative contributions of climate change and crop management to crop phenology is critical for designing climate-resilient agricultural practices—yet this remains underexplored for wheat in Xinjiang’s oases, a major arid-region agricultural hub. Using 1981–2021 phenological and meteorological data from 26 agrometeorological stations, we integrated a first-difference multiple regression model, Pearson’s correlation, multiple linear regression, and path analysis to quantify spatiotemporal phenological dynamics; disentangle the distinct impacts of climate and management factors; and identify dominant climatic drivers regulating wheat growth. Temperature was confirmed as the dominant climatic factor regulating wheat growth in arid oasis regions. Results showed that the annual change rates of sowing, emergence, booting, flowering, and maturity dates were 0.261 (−0.027), 0.265 (−0.103), −0.272 (−0.161), −0.269 (−0.226), and −0.216 (−0.127) days/year for winter (spring) wheat, respectively. For phenological durations, the annual change rates of sowing-to-emergence, emergence-to-anthesis, anthesis-to-maturity, vegetative growth period, reproductive growth period, and whole growth period were 0.007 (−0.076), −0.537 (−0.068), 0.096 (0.099), −0.502 (−0.134), 0.068 (0.034), and −0.434 (−0.100) days/year for winter (spring) wheat, respectively. Regarding climatic effects, maximum, minimum, and mean temperatures generally exerted positive impacts on wheat phenological durations; increased precipitation prolonged growth periods; and higher sunshine hours shortened winter wheat growth periods while extending those of spring wheat. Multiple regression and path analysis were employed to clarify the relative importance of climatic and management factors, as well as their direct and indirect effects on wheat phenology and yield. Furthermore, climate change had a substantially weaker impact on wheat phenology and yield compared to crop management, with climatic driver intensity following the order of mean temperature > precipitation > sunshine hours—confirming mean temperature as the key climate-induced driver. Correlation analysis revealed a positive relationship between yield and growth period length. This study provides novel insights into region-specific climate adaptation for wheat production in arid oases, highlighting that planting longer-growth-period varieties is an effective, eco-friendly strategy to enhance climate resilience and ensure sustainable agricultural development in fragile ecosystems.
Huang et al. (Tue,) studied this question.