Maize is an automatic choice in cereal- legume intercropping system. Being an aggressive crop maize provides shades to legumes. How far leaf defoliation helps in maximizing system productivity?
Leaf defoliation is a labor intensive work. Farmers may not be interested to do this job if they do not need leaves for feeding their livestock. Changing spacing is a common practice for intercropping (Maize-legume).
For duel purpose use of maize you may read the below article. You may try defoliation with better spacing to increase the availability of light for legumes. Article Source-sink manipulation and population density effects on f...
@Shah-Al Emran, thanks Dr. for your valuable comments and you rightly told that changing of planting geometry is a common practice in maize based intercropping system. Recently I have read a PhD thesis of Dr. Muhammad Ali Raza of Sichian Agril University, and it is entitled as 'Optimum leaf defoliation: a new agronomic approach to increase seed yield and nutrient uptake of maize soybean relay intercropping system. The study revealed that soybean absorbed more PAR due to leaf defoliation of maize and ultimately system productivity enhanced. So expecting a discussion asked the question.
Further, under subsistence farming of smallholders, labor is not a constraint. Maize leaves may be used as forage or fuel.
Please think of.
Wide bed and paired row planting of maize will be beneficial for accommodating inter crops. Due to wide space between rows, there will be no shading effect on intercrops. Moreover the yield of maize may be higher due to advantage of border effect.
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