Abstract
A two-year study was conducted on an Alfisol in the humid tropics of southwest Nigeria to investigate the effects of tillage and intercropping on soil water characteristics, performance of maize (Zea mays L.) and groundnut (Arachis hypogea L.). The experiment was a split-plot design with tillage methods as the main plot and intercropping as the sub-plots in a completely randomized design with four replications. Tillage treatments were conventional tillage (CT) and no-tillage (NT) while the cropping treatments were sole maize, sole groundnut and intercropped maize + groundnut. Gravimetric soil water content (swgc) showed that NT had higher soil water content in all cropping treatments than CT. NT had significantly (p NT intercropping > CT intercropping > sole maize CT. For groundnut, the trend was NT sole groundnut > NT intercropped > CT sole groundnut > CT intercropped. Key words: Tillage, intercropping, soil water retention, infiltration.
Highlights
In the humid tropics, intercropping is a prominent feature of peasant farming which helps to minimize risks associated with monocultures and assures stable income and nutrition (Okigbo, 1980; Ikeorgu and Odurukwe, 1989; Konian et al, 2013)
A two-year study was conducted on an Alfisol in the humid tropics of southwest Nigeria to investigate the effects of tillage and intercropping on soil water characteristics, performance of maize (Zea mays L.) and groundnut (Arachis hypogea L.)
Intercropped plot of NT had significantly (p
Summary
In the humid tropics, intercropping is a prominent feature of peasant farming which helps to minimize risks associated with monocultures and assures stable income and nutrition (Okigbo, 1980; Ikeorgu and Odurukwe, 1989; Konian et al, 2013). Maize-groundnut intercropping is often practice under different tillage methods to produce food and obtain cash income from the same piece of land (Ikeorgu and Odurukwe, 1989, Ishaq et al, 2001). Maize (Zea mays L.) is the largest cultivated crop in Nigeria in all the ecological zones of the country. Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L), known as “peanut” or “earthnuts” is referred to a king of “oil seeds” and globally cultivated on an area of 24.62 million hectares of land (FAO, 2013).
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