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With global population growth and climate change, food security and global warming have emerged as two major challenges to agricultural development. Plastic film mulching (PM) has long been used to improve yields in rain-fed agricultural systems, but few studies have focused on soil gas emissions from mulched rainfed potatoes on a long-term and regional scale. This study integrated field data with the Denitrification-Decomposition (DNDC) model to evaluate the impacts of PM on potato yields, greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia (NH₃) emissions in rainfed agricultural systems in China. We found that PM increased potato yield by 39.7 % (1505 kg ha⁻¹), carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions by 15.4 % (123 kg CO₂ eq ha⁻¹), nitrous oxide (N₂O) emissions by 47.8 % (1016 kg CO₂ eq ha⁻¹), and global warming potential (GWP) by 38.9 % (1030 kg CO₂ eq ha⁻¹), while NH₃ volatilization decreased by 33.9 % (8.4 …