Abstract
Wheat, barley and finger millet as a major crop and lupine as a companion crop are food crops often traditionally grown in an intercropping in North Western Ethiopia. The experiment was conducted on intercropping of lupine (Lupinus albus L.) with wheat (Triticum aestivum), barely (Hordeum vulgar) and finger millet (Eleusine coracana) in 2009 at Adet Agricultural research station. The treatments were sole wheat at a seed rate of 175 kg/ ha, sole barley at a seed rate of 125 kg/ ha, sole finger millet at a seed rate of 30 kg/ ha, sole lupine at a seed rate of 90 kg/ h and 25, 50 and 75% of the sole lupine seed rate combined with each full cereal seed rate to determine the effect of lupine intercropping and seed proportion on the growth, yield and yield component; and lodging of wheat, barley and finger millet. The trial layout was a completely randomized block design with three replications. SAS software’s were used to compute the analysis of variance. Increasing in lupine seed proportion in a mixture, delay in finger millet days to heading and maturity also significantly increased. The yield and yield component of most cereals were not significantly affected when they were intercropped with lupine in all seeding ratios except finger millet plant height, harvest index and wheat total biomass yield. Hence, growing cereals in association with lupine was not showed its yield reduction and the farmer’s primary objective of maintaining a ‘full’ cereal yield was attained. Intercropping lupine with cereals gave physical support for cereals particularly in high lupine seed proportion. The combined yield advantage was greater than one in the cases of lupine-wheat followed by lupine-finger millet mixtures at all seeding ratios. Hence, two of the best combinations which were gave higher land use efficiency are the lupine-wheat mixture at the 75:100 seeding ratio (49.4%) followed by the lupine-finger millet mixtures at the 75:100 seeding ratio (29.4%). Key words: Wheat, barley, finger millet, lupine, intercropping, seed proportion.
Highlights
Intercropping is the cropping system involving the growing of two or more crops in the same piece of land at the same time or relayed which could compute for growth resources for certain growth period
The yield and yield component of most cereals were not significantly affected when they were intercropped with lupine in all seeding ratios except finger millet plant height, harvest index and wheat total biomass yield
The present study demonstrated that, except days to maturity of finger millet, intercropping of lupine with wheat, barley and finger millet at three different seeding ratios had no effect on phenological attributes of cereal species
Summary
Intercropping is the cropping system involving the growing of two or more crops in the same piece of land at the same time or relayed which could compute for growth resources for certain growth period. Is a popular crop production system used in subsistence tropical agriculture and is very common in the semi arid areas of Africa (Connolly et al, 2001). It is a cropping practice that possess the potential of providing valuable ecosystem services such as improved pest control (Mitchell et al, 2002), increased resource use efficiency (Hauggaard-Nielsen et al, 2001), lowered weed infestation levels (Liebman and Dyck ,1993) in crop livestock mixed farming system
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