Yield stability of winter wheat in intercrop makes better adaptation to climate conditions

Abstract

Global climate change is a main issue today. Negative effects, such as gradual warming, annual precipitation decrease and frequences of extreme meteorological events have also felt in Hungary. These effects significally tested the adaptive capacity of our cultivated plants. In our country two-thirds of the arable land is occupied by cereals. In most cases there is no crop rotation, pre-crop effect remains unused. Intercrop is a special kind of plant association, where two or more crops growing simultaneously on the same field. It can be increases resilience against pest and pesticides, provides better utilization of growth resources, and weed suppression. In mixture mitigate the effects of climate. Our experiments were made in 2020/2021 with 3 winter wheat varieties (GK Szilárd, Celulle, GK Csillag) and a winter pea variety (Aviron) in 4 repeats, on 10 square meter random layout plots in Szeged-Öthalom. We set 3 different seed density in every variety in every combination. Higher seed density of wheat makes higher yield regardless of pea, except of GK Csillag at 75% seed density of wheat and pea. Increasing pea ratio in mixture, wheat yield decreased. In contrast GK Szilárd and Cellule, their 75% and 100% mixture with 75% Aviron achieved higher wheat yield. Pure stands have shown better values than the combined ones, vice versa for GK Csillag: every seed density with 50% of Aviron gaves the highest wheat yield. Wheat and pea yield together gives the yield advantage what intercrop provides.