Soil Quality Shapes Yield Gains from Improved Management in China’s Cereal Systems

Recovering unrealized crop production through improved field management is important for sustainable agriculture, but the benefits may depend on soil conditions. We aimed to determine how soil quality modifies the yield benefits of management improvement in China’s maize, wheat and rice systems. We test two hypotheses: (1) that higher soil quality is associated with smaller relative yield shortfalls, and (2) that the gains associated with improved technical efficiency (TE) depend on soil quality. Using field observations across China, we quantified the difference between cultivar-specific attainable and actual field yields and combined stochastic frontier estimation, random forest modeling and scenario analysis. The relative shortfall was 8.4 percentage points (pp) lower in maize, 11.0 pp lower in wheat and 11.8 pp lower in rice on high- than low-quality soils. However, its sensitivity to TE improvement declined with soil quality in maize and wheat but increased in rice. Better soils therefore partly compensated for inefficient management in maize and wheat, whereas they enabled greater returns to management improvement in rice. Soil organic matter and available phosphorus were the principal soil attributes associated with lower shortfalls in maize and wheat, whereas available potassium and pH were more influential in rice. Scenarios analyses showed that combined soil and TE improvement reduced predicted relative shortfall by 8.7 pp in maize, 8.9 pp in wheat and 15.1 pp in rice. Spatial prioritization further identified where soil-focused, management-focused or integrated interventions offered the greatest potential. These findings identify crop-specific associations between soil conditions and TE-related yield-shortfall reduction and provide model-based priorities for evaluating soil and management interventions through field testing.