Maize/soybean strip intercropping produces higher crop yields and saves water under semi-arid conditions

Muhammad Ali Raza; Hassan Shehryar Yasin; Hina Gul; Ruijun Qin; Atta Mohi Ud Din; Muhammad Hayder Bin Khalid; Sajad Hussain; Harun Gitari; Amjed Saeed; Jun Wang; Esmaeil Rezaei-Chiyaneh; Ayman El Sabagh; Amir Manzoor; Akash Fatima; Shakeel Ahmad; Feng Yang; Milan Skalicky; Wenyu Yang

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.1006720

Maize/soybean strip intercropping produces higher crop yields and saves water under semi-arid conditions

Front Plant Sci. 2022 Nov 1:13:1006720. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.1006720. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Muhammad Ali Raza^{1

2

3}, Hassan Shehryar Yasin¹, Hina Gul⁴, Ruijun Qin⁵, Atta Mohi Ud Din^{1

6}, Muhammad Hayder Bin Khalid^{1

2}, Sajad Hussain^{1

2}, Harun Gitari⁷, Amjed Saeed¹, Jun Wang⁸, Esmaeil Rezaei-Chiyaneh⁹, Ayman El Sabagh¹⁰, Amir Manzoor¹, Akash Fatima¹¹, Shakeel Ahmad¹², Feng Yang², Milan Skalicky¹³, Wenyu Yang²

Affiliations

¹ National Research Center of Intercropping, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur, Pakistan.
² College of Agronomy, Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China.
³ Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, Gansu, China.
⁴ National Center for Industrial Biotechnology, Pir Mehar Ali Shah-Arid Agricultural University, Rawalpindi, Pakistan.
⁵ Hermiston Agricultural Research and Extension Center, Oregon State University, Hermiston, OR, United States.
⁶ College of Agriculture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, China.
⁷ Department of Agricultural Science and Technology, School of Agriculture and Enterprise Development, Kenyatta University, Nairobi, Kenya.
⁸ Shaanxi Key Laboratory of Earth Surface System and Environmental Carrying Capacity, College of Urban and Environmental Science, Northwest University, Xian, China.
⁹ Department of Plant Production and Genetics, Faculty of Agriculture, Urmia University, Urmia, Iran.
¹⁰ Department of Field Crops, Faculty of Agriculture, Siirt University, Siirt, Turkey.
¹¹ Institute of Plant Breeding and Biotechnology, Muhammad Nawaz Sharif-University of Agriculture, Multan, Pakistan.
¹² Department of Agronomy, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Multan, Pakistan.
¹³ Department of Botany and Plant Physiology, Faculty of Agrobiology, Food and Natural Resources, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Prague, Czechia.

Abstract

Sustainable increases in crop production require efficient use of resources, and intercropping can improve water use efficiency and land productivity at reduced inputs. Thus, in a three-year field experiment, the performance of maize/soybean strip intercropping system differing with maize plant density (6 maize plants m-2, low, D1; 8 maize plants m-2, medium, D2; and 10 maize plants m-2, high, D3) was evaluated in comparison with sole maize or soybean cropping system. Results revealed that among all intercropping treatments, D2 had a significantly higher total leaf area index (maize LAI + soybean LAI; 8.2), total dry matter production (maize dry matter + soybean dry matter; 361.5 g plant-1), and total grain yield (maize grain yield + soybean grain yield; 10122.5 kg ha-1) than D1 and D3, and also higher than sole maize (4.8, 338.7 g plant-1, and 9553.7 kg ha-1) and sole soybean (4.6, 64.8 g plant-1, and 1559.5 kg ha-1). The intercropped maize was more efficient in utilizing the radiation and water, with a radiation use efficiency of 3.5, 5.2, and 4.3 g MJ-1 and water use efficiency of 14.3, 16.2, and 13.3 kg ha-1 mm-1, while that of intercropped soybean was 2.5, 2.1, and 1.8 g MJ-1 and 2.1, 1.9, and 1.5 kg ha-1 mm-1 in D1, D2, and D3, respectively. In intercropping, the land and water equivalent ratios ranged from 1.22 to 1.55, demonstrating that it is a sustainable strategy to improve land and water use efficiencies; this maximization is likely associated with the species complementarities for radiation, water, and land in time and space, which resulted in part from competition avoidance responses that maximize the economic profit (e. g., 1300 US $ ha-1 in D2) over sole maize (798 US $ ha-1) or sole soybean (703 US $ ha-1). Overall, these results indicate that optimizing strip intercropping systems can save 20-50% of water and land, especially under the present scenario of limited resources and climate change. However, further research is required to fully understand the resource capture mechanisms of intercrops in intercropping.

Keywords: competition; economic profit; land productivity; sustainability; water use efficiency.