Evaluation of intercropping of sweet corn and leguminous cover crops at various doses of nitrogen on production and land equivalence ratio

The study was aimed to determine and evaluate the effect of different levels of nitrogen fertilizer doses and planting patterns on chlorophyll content, sweet corn yield, leguminous cover crop (LCC) yield and land equivalent ratio (LER). A factorial randomized block design with 2 factors and 3 replications was used throughout the experiment. The first factor was the dose of nitrogen consisting of 4 doses, namely 0, 50, 100 and 150 kg nitrogen ha-1. The second factor was planting pattern, consisted of 3 planting pattern i.e. sole cropping sweet corn, intercropping sweet corn-Centrocema pubescens and intercropping sweet corn- Pueraria phaseloides. In addition, monoculture planting of C. pubescens and P. phaseloides was also established to calculate LER. The results showed that increasing the dose of nitrogen had an impact on increasing the chlorophyll content and fresh cob yield of sweet corn. The fresh forage yield of P. phaseloides was significantly higher than that of C. pubescens. The LER value of sweet corn-LCC intercropping was more than 1, which means that intercropping was more profitable than sweet corn planted as a monoculture. Based on the results, it may be concluded that the highest sweet corn ear production can be achieved with application of 50-100 kg N ha-1 and to obtain highest LCC forage production may be done by intercropping sweet corn-P. phaseloides. published by the International Journal of Agronomy and Agricultural Research (IJAAR)