Land equivalent coefficient of intercropped varieties of wheat (Triticum aestivum) with pea (Pisum sativum) in two sites of Qandulah and Al-Baidain, Libya

Abstract

Cereal-legume intercrop can play a critical role in improving food production worldwide, e.g., the production of wheat varieties can be improved significantly through increase in the Land Equivalent Ratio (LER), when intercropped with pea. This study was conducted in two sites, namely Qandulah andAl-Baida in Al-Jabal Al-Akhdar in Libya, during the growing season of 2017–18 to investigate the effect of intercropping wheat and pea on the production of three varieties of wheat and to study the land equivalent coefficient of this strategy. The experimental design was randomized complete blocks arrangement with three replicates, forsole wheat, sole pea and intercropped wheatpea 50:50, using wheat varieties TR, TUS and SER1 and pea variety PSI100. Our technique shows an increase in grain yield for wheat variety SER1 by 1.90 t/ha, while for wheat variety TUS it produced a grain yield of 1.57 t/ha relative to sole. The highest grain yield obtained when intercropping pea with wheat variety TUS, which was 0.73 t/ha in Qandulah, whereas an increase in grain yield by 85.26% was achieved in Qandulah compared to Al-Baida. The low productivity of wheat and pea was observed in Al-Baida that was mainly due to low N content, high levels of sodium and potassium, as well as high content of iron and phosphorus with high soil oxides. Seed yield of sole pea gave 0.61 t/ha compared to the intercrop that gave 0.12 t/ha in Qandulah.The important results of this study indicated that higher Land LER was achieved with wheat variety SER1 of 2.280 and with wheat variety TUS of 0.531 when intercropping wheat-pea by 50:50 ratio in Al-Baida.