Performance of Some Plant Species Grown in Replacement Design under Different Competition Mode

Abstract

Abstract A pot experiments was conducted at Grdarasha Experimental Farm / College of Agricultural Engineering Sciences / Salahaddin University / Erbil, during the winter growing season 2016 and 2017 to study the performance of Triticum aestivum L. and Cicer arietinum L. in sole cropping and intercropping in the presence of the Sinapis arvensis L. in a substitutive experiment arrangement with single, double and triple consortium. Experimental treatments were both pure stands and mix stands. Intercrops were symbolized by numbers and letters as (1A:2B:3C). The preceding number of each letter denotes the proportion of the land occupied by each of the Triticum aestivum (A), Cicer arietinum L. (B) and Sinapis arvensis L. (C). Pot experiment was consist of four modes of competition (full, shoot, root and no-competition) among three competitor plant species. As for wheat the relative plant height 1.05 was obtained in root competition mode, the same effect observed on grain yield relatively with values 1.29. In addition, it appears that mustard in treatment 2A3B1C has significantly outperformed all the other treatments with mean relative values 1.54 and 1.17 respectively in grain and biological yield measured originally as g plant−1.