The productive performance of intercropping

Abstract

Crop diversification has been put forward as a way to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture without penalizing its productivity. In this context, intercropping, the planned combination of two or more crop species in one field, is a promising practice. On an average, intercropping saves land compared with the component sole crops, but it remains unclear whether intercropping produces a higher yield than the most productive single crop per unit area, i.e., whether intercropping achieves transgressive overyielding. Here, we quantified the performance of intercropping for the production of grain, calories, and protein in a global meta-analysis of several production indices. The results show that intercrops outperform sole crops when the objective is to achieve a diversity of crop products on a given land area. However, when intercropping is evaluated for its ability to produce raw products without concern for diversity, intercrops on average generate a small loss in grain or calorie yield compared with the most productive sole crop (−4%) but achieve similar or higher protein yield, especially with maize/legume combinations grown at moderate N supply. Overall, although intercropping does not achieve transgressive overyielding on average, our results show that intercropping performs well in producing a diverse set of crop products and performs almost similar to the most productive component sole crop to produce raw products, while improving crop resilience, enhancing ecosystem services, and improving nutrient use efficiency. Our study, therefore, confirms the great interest of intercropping for the development of a more sustainable agricultural production, supporting diversified diets.

Current agricultural diversification strategies are already agroecological

“…Intercropping, the planned combination of two or more crops in a field, is a widely used practice to increase biodiversity in agroecosystems. A meta-analysis of 226 field experiments showed that intercropping produced a diverse range of nutritional products with minimal yield sacrifice (Li et al, 2023). Intercropping of grain legumes and cereals improves the use of soil N resources and reduces, but does not eliminate, the requirement for synthetic N fertilizer (Jensen et al, 2020; see Falconnier et al ., this issue).…”

A multidisciplinary on-farm survey of maize-bean intercropping highlights key considerations for reviving traditional agricultural systems.

“…To deliver high-yielding crops, conventional agriculture relies mainly on simplified cropping systems, with a single crop species grown on a field in a given growing season (sole croppring) and environment standardization through the use of chemical inputs. With the current environmental challenges, there is a growing concern for more sustainable agroecosystems based on ecological regulations defined as nature-based solutions (Beillouin 2021; Fréville et al 2022; Gaba et al 2015; Keichinger et al 2021; Li et al 2023) . Such remobilization can be implemented, for example, through mixed cropping (intercropping), where several crops are grown simultaneously with no distinct row arrangement.…”

Root responses to canopy far-red light in cereal-legume crop mixtures

“…In both natural vegetation and crop stands, increased species richness may increase whole-stand performance in terms of growth, reproductive yield or resource-use e ciency (van der Plas 2019). Many studies have focused on understanding the mechanisms driving these positive effects, particularly in agriculture, as mixed-species cropping is presented as a means towards more sustainable biodiversitypositive production (Kelty, 1992;Li et al, 2023;Malezieux et al, 2009).…”