Effect of intercropping maize with cowpea on the yield and its quality

Abstract EN

A field experiment was conducted at the Agronomy Department Farm, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University Egypt., during two summer growing seasons of 2017 and 2018 to study the relative advantage of intercropping systems of maize with cowpea on the yield and its attributes as well as some quality traits.

The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design with four replicates.

Treatments were sole maize, sole cowpea and five planting patterns of maize intercropped with cowpea.

The obtained results revealed significant variations among the intercropping treatments for the all studied maize traits, except ear length and 100 grain weight.

In addition, sole planting for maize hybrid 128 surpassed sole planting for maize hybrid 131 and the other intercropping patterns with regard to grain yield feddan1 and gained the maximum grain yield feddan-1 which was 38.82 ardab feddan-1 .

Furthermore, the obtained data show highly significant variations among the intercropping treatments for the all studied cowpea traits.

Thus, Sole cowpea crop produced highly significant forage yield (11.59 ton feddan-1 as summation of two cuts) than intercrop patterns.

Here too, sole cowpea crop registered the minimum fiber percent as compared with intercrop patterns.

Otherwise, the highest mean value of protein percentage (17.30 %) was recorded from intercrop maize with cowpea 1:2 or 2:1 rows.

The land equivalent ratio The for most intercropping systems was greater than one, indicating that intercropping was more efficient than sole cropping in utilizing the available resources and resulted in higher productivity.