Effect of cereal-legume intercropping on advance soil nutriments under semi-arid climate

Abstract

Abstract Intercropping is known to improve the available resource usage and increase yield compared to sole cropping. Field experiments were carried out in 2020-2021 (EXP-A) and 2021-2022 (EXP-B) in Medenine, Tunisia, to compare at the flowering stage of plant growth, the agronomic performance of cereals (durum wheat) intercropped with a legume (chickpea) to their monoculture and to the soil bulk such as microbial mass C and N, nitrogen nutrition, and carbon availability. In this study, we found no significant differences between the proportions of Ntot for sole or intercropped Chickpea, with a difference of 4 and 6% for two seasons of culture (2020-2021 and 2021-2022). On the other hand, durum wheat grown in intercrops (DuWh-IR) significantly (p<0.05) acquired more Ntot than durum wheat grown in mono-crops (DuWh-MC) with an augmentation of 20% in 2020-2021 and 18% in 2021-2022. At the same time, the N concentration of durum wheat roots increases significantly under the effect of intercropping with 20% in 2020-2021 and 28% in 2021-2022. However, it is noted that the N content for chickpeas was comparatively lower for the intercrops as compared to sales crops i.e., eight percent in the years 2020 to 2021 and seven percent in the year 2021 to 2022, for both the shoots. In semi-arid regions of Southern Tunisia, cereals-legumes (Chickpea-Durum wheat) intercropping can influence the N and C soil fertility, which improves crop production while respecting the environment by reducing the use of nitrogen fertilizers.