Why legume is intercropped?

WHY LEGUME IS INTER CROPPED?

  • There are many advantages due to inter cropping a legume and non-legume crop. This system helps in economizing the fertilizer use, improves the forage quality and at times may even increase the biomass production. This is illustrated through the following example.

System

Fertilizer used Kg/ha

Forage yield t/ha

Crude Protein (Kg/ha)

N

P2O5

Green

Dry

Sorghum (pure crop)

120

50

49.0

10.18

680

Sorghum + Cowpea

70

55

49.3

10.10

1024

  • These inter cropping systems aim at production of green forages with the existing resources (land, labor, capital, water and other inputs) available with the farmer without foregoing the regular cultivation of grain and commercial crops in the farm.
Last modified: Tuesday, 2 August 2011, 5:08 AM