Intercropping, which is the agricultural practice of growing two or more crops in the same land area, is not currently yielding adequate results in Africa. Despite the advantages of intercropping like improved soil fertility, protection against pests and diseases and eventual increase in farm yield, this farming practice is faced with challenges—inadequate planning, bad crop management and lack...

Steadily rising prices for timber on Mindanao in the Philippines have given an incentive to farmers to devote some of their land to fast-growing tree species. The costs and bene®ts of intercropping young timber trees with food crops was studied in a 1000 stem haÿ1 stand of Paraserianthes falcataria. At 2 years of age, diameter at breast height and height of intercropped trees were 33 and 21% gr...

The tripartite symbiosis between legumes, rhizobia and mycorrhizal fungi are generally considered to be beneficial for the nitrogen (N) uptake of legumes, but the facilitation of symbiosis in legume/non-legume intercropping systems is not clear. Therefore, the aims of the research are as follows: (1) to verify if the dual inoculation can facilitate the N uptake and N transfer in maize/soybean i...

Concern about NO− 3 leaching and groundwater pollution from corn monoculture has prompted an investigation of alternative production systems that reduce leaching. It is hypothesized that both intercropping and water-table control could increase N uptake and reduce the quantity of N that might be lost due to leaching. This study compared corn (Zea mays L.) with annual Italian rye-grass (Lolium m...

The crop intercepted photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and radiation use efficiency (RUE) vary markedly in different intercropping systems. The HHLA (horizontally homogeneous leaf area) and ERCRT (extended row crop radiation transmission) models have been established to calculate the intercepted PAR for intercrops. However, there is still a lack of study on the intercepted PAR and RUE u...

As the major crops in north China, spring crops are usually planted from April through May every spring and harvested in fall. Wheat is also a very common crop traditionally planted in fall or spring and harvested in summer year by year. This continuous cropping system exhibited the disadvantages of reducing the fertility of soil through decreasing microbial diversity. Thus, management of micro...

Intercropping is regarded as an important agricultural practice to improve crop production and environmental quality in the regions with intensive agricultural production, e.g., northern China. To optimize agronomic advantage of maize (Zea mays L.) and soybean (Glycine max L.) intercropping system compared to monoculture of maize, two sequential experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 was to s...

To assess the suitability of Leguminous species in rice intercropping systems, physiological and morphological characteristics of Crotalaria juncea, Cajanus cajan, Mucuna pruriens var. cochinchinensis, Calopogonium mucunoides, Aeschynomene histrix and Stylosanthes hamata were determined in monoculture. C. cajan and S. hamata were selected and intercropped with two upland rice cultivars (WAB56-5...

On-farm production of protein is limited in most dairy farm operations in arid and semi-arid environments. Cereal-legume intercropping could be a viable option to obtain forage with higher protein content. A two-year experiment was conducted during 2009 and 2010 growing seasons in a loamy soil to determine whether intercropping pattern of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) and annual medic (Medica...