Optimizing sowing date and plant density improve peanut yield by mitigating heat and chilling stress

Peanut (Arachis hypogea L.) yield is dramatically declined by extreme weatherstresses under climate change. Adjusting the sowing date and plant density areeffective strategies to mitigate these stresses and improve peanut yield. However, amechanistic understanding of the influence of environmental drivers and an opti-mized strategy have yet to be developed. Here, a 3-year field experiment wasconducted to evaluate the sowing date (April 25, early sowing; May 5, middle sowing;May 15, late sowing) and plant density (24, 30, and 36 plants m−2 as low, medium,and high) of peanut in the North China Plain. We found that higher pod yield wasobserved in the middle sowing (∼4492.4 kg ha−1 ) compared with the early and latesowing (∼3317.2 and 4088.1 kg ha−1 , respectively). Meanwhile, the pod yield in highdensity (∼4162.5 kg ha−1 ) was 10.6% and 4.7% higher than low and medium density,respectively, mainly due to higher leaf area index. The relative peanut pod yield waspositively correlated with the average minimum temperature 5 days before and afterthe flowering pegging stage, whilst it was negatively correlated with average max-imum temperature 5 days before and after pod filling stage. Therefore, optimizingtemperature conditions to improve the peanut yield can be achieved by adjusting thesowing date. In conclusion, sowing date and plant density manipulation constitute auseful method to mitigate heat and chilling stress and improve peanut yield.