Sensitivity and Tolerance of Different Annual Crops to Different Levels of Banana Shade and Dry Season Weather
Open Access
- 25 November 2020
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Frontiers Media SA in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems
Abstract
Intercropping in small-holder production systems in East and Central Africa is very common and offers potential for significant yield and environmental benefits. However, the reduced light availability under banana canopies constrains the success of the intercrop in banana systems. Determining a balance between the optimal spacing/densities of banana plants with optimized intercrop selection based on their sensitivity and tolerance to shade is imperative. This study, through extensive field experiments performed in South Kivu, DR Congo investigated the resilience of a wide range of food and forage crops to varying banana shade levels. The same crop species grown as monocrops served as controls. Quantitative yield assessments showed yam, sweet potato, ginger and forage grasses to have a good potential to grow under moderately dense to dense banana fields. Taro, soybean, mucuna, chili, eggplant, and Crotalaria sp. performed well in sparsely spaced banana fields with moderate shading. Cassava and soybean showed limited tolerance to shade. Intercropping in banana systems is also generally confined to the rainy seasons due to the high sensitivity of most annual intercrops to long dry weather in the dry season months. We also thus assessed the sensitivity of chickpea and mucuna to the long dry weather of the dry seasons and found them to have great potential for extending farming production into the dry season. Overall, we show that careful selection and allocation of crops with varying sensitivity to various banana shade levels and dry season weather can potentially increase whole field productivity.Keywords
This publication has 27 references indexed in Scilit:
- A risk-minimizing argument for traditional crop varietal diversity use to reduce pest and disease damage in agricultural ecosystems of UgandaAgriculture, Ecosystems & Environment, 2012
- Testing the shade tolerance of selected crops under Parkia biglobosa (Jacq.) Benth. in an agroforestry parkland in Burkina Faso, West AfricaAgroforestry Systems, 2011
- Consistency between an allometric approach and optimal partitioning theory in global patterns of plant biomass allocationFunctional Ecology, 2007
- Effect of light and temperature on the phenology and maturation of the fruit of eggplant (Solanum melongena) grown in greenhousesNew Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 2007
- Impacts and causes of land fragmentation, and lessons learned from land consolidation in South AsiaLand Use Policy, 2005
- Genotype by environment studies across Australia reveal the importance of phenology for chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) improvementAustralian Journal of Agricultural Research, 2004
- INFLUENCE OF SHADE ON STOMATAL DENSITY, LEAF SIZE AND OTHER LEAF CHARACTERISTICS IN THE MAJOR TROPICAL ROOT CROPS, TANNIA, SWEET POTATO, YAM, CASSAVA AND TAROExperimental Agriculture, 2000
- EFFECT OF SHADE ON PHOTOSYNTHETIC PIGMENTS IN THE TROPICAL ROOT CROPS: YAM, TARO, TANNIA, CASSAVA AND SWEET POTATOExperimental Agriculture, 1998
- Ammonium determination in soil extracts by the salicylate methodCommunications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis, 1986
- Resource Limitation in Plants-An Economic AnalogyAnnual Review of Ecology and Systematics, 1985