Agrotechnology

Effect of biodiversity management of cereal and legume crop species on ecological resources utilization, productivity and land use efficiency

4^th International Conference on Agriculture & Horticulture

July 13-15, 2015 Beijing, China

Ezzat M Abd El Lateef and A AFarrag

Posters-Accepted Abstracts: Agrotechnol

Abstract:

Field experiments were conducted to examine the interaction of biodiversity of different cereal-legume crop species in the same land area. Cereals species maize (Zeaa mays L) and grain sorghum (Sorgum biocolor L Moench) were planted simultaneously with legume species C-3 i.e., soybean (Glycine max L Merril), mungbean (Vignaradiata L Wilczek) and Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata L Walp). Each crop species was grown as sole or mixed in different cropping patterns for comparison and the interactions of crop species on competition for ecological factors, productivity as well as land use efficiency were recorded. The data of light intensity showed reductions along the C-3 legumes soybean, mungbean and cowpea conopies. Soybean and mungbean showed more shading tolerance to the biological stress resulted from adjacent taller cereal crop species than of cowpea. On contrast, reversible magnitude in light energy flux density was reported for the maize which was less competitive for light under mixed cropping than that in the solid cultures. All legumes showed reductions in growth and yield parameters compared with the solid cultures. On contrast beneficial effects due to mixed cropping were reported for maize and sorghum. The data of the land equivalent ratio (LER) showed yield advantages due to mixed cropping by (12%-37%) according to the adjacent crop species. It could be concluded from this study that biodiversity of C-3 and C-4 crop species with proper management of growing such contrasting species could effectively help in better agro-ecological factors use and increase land use efficiency.