Enhancing Crop Yield and Nutritional Values Through Zinc Biofortification in Maize-soybean Strip Intercropping System

Background: Zinc, an essential micronutrient performing a key function in agricultural system, influencing crop yield, nutritional valueand overall development and growth of plants. Intercropping is referring to the most important practices to improving land utilization rates in India, which has limited arable land resources. Methods: The study aim to investigate the effect of different zinc levels on yield and qualitative characteristics of maize and soybean in 2:2 strip intercropping. The field study was conducted during kharif 2023 at Lovely Professional University, Punjab. The experiment was conducted with a set of nine treatments in randomized block design (RBD) with three replications. Result: The results revealed that the maximum yield and yield attributes such as cobs per plant (1.44), number of rows per cob (13.81), number of grains per row (25.07), number of grains per cob (372.28) and grain yield (17.47 q ha-1), number of pods per plant (35.31), number of seed per pod (2.82), number of seeds per plant (95.33), seed index (13.02). Maximum maize equivalent yield (48.57 q ha-1), maize production efficiency (18.39 kg ha-1 day-1), soybean production efficiency (12.06 kg ha-1 day-1) were recorded in T9 (soil supplementation of 19 kg ha-1 of ZnSO4 + foliar spray of 0.2% ZnSO4). In contrast, T2 (sole maize) showed the highest grain yield (32.33 q ha-1), stover yield (67.57 q ha-1), biological yield (96.80 q ha-1). Similarly, T1 (sole soybean) showed the highest pod yield (24.97 q ha-1), haulm yield (51.18 q ha-1), biological yield (76.15 q ha-1) but lower values for other parameters compared to T9. Applying zinc significantly rises the zinc concentration in maize grains, stover (24.92 to 28.05 mg kg-1, 26.90 to 35.25 mg kg-1), soybean pods, haulm (23.92 to 35.03 mg kg-1, 25.95 to 41.38 mg kg-1), with variations across treatments.