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Syndromes of production in intercropping impact yield gains

Nature Plants volume 6, pages 653–660 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Intercropping, the simultaneous production of multiple crops on the same field, provides opportunities for the sustainable intensification of agriculture if it can provide a greater yield per unit land and fertilizer than sole crops. The worldwide absolute yield gain of intercropping as compared with sole crops has not been analysed. We therefore performed a global meta-analysis to quantify the effect of intercropping on the yield gain, exploring the effects of crop species combinations, temporal and spatial arrangements, and fertilizer input. We found that the absolute yield gains, compared with monocultures, were the greatest for mixtures of maize with short-grain cereals or legumes that had substantial temporal niche differentiation from maize, when grown with high nutrient inputs, and using multirow strips of each species. This approach, commonly practised in China, provided yield gains that were (in an absolute sense) about four times as large as those in another, low-input intercropping strategy, commonly practised outside China. The alternative intercropping strategy consisted of growing mixtures of short-stature crop species, often as full mixtures, with the same growing period and with low to moderate nutrient inputs. Both the low- and high-yield intercropping strategies saved 16–29% of the land and 19–36% of the fertilizer compared with monocultures grown under the same management as the intercrop. The two syndromes of production in intercropping uncovered by this meta-analysis show that intercropping offers opportunities for the sustainable intensification of both high- and low-input agriculture.

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Fig. 1: Schematic illustrations and examples of alternative intercropping strategies.
Fig. 2: NEs of various types of intercropping and the associations with TND and fertilizer inputs.
Fig. 3: TND, fertilizer inputs and yield levels of intercrops with and without maize.
Fig. 4: Spatial arrangements, species selection and geographic origin of intercrops with and without maize.
Fig. 5: Principal component analysis of the associations between yield gain and intercropping design and management.
Fig. 6: Land and fertilizer savings of intercropping.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code availability

The R code used for the analysis is available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge funding from the Chinese National Basic Research Program (grant no. 2015CB150400) and the National Key R&D Program of China (grant no. 2017YFD0200200/2017YFD0200207). We also acknowledge the financial support of the Wageningen University Sandwich Scholarship. We acknowledge funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme for Research & Innovation under grant agreement no. 727217 (www.remix-intercrops.eu). We also thank L. Bedoussac, L. Viguier, J. Du and W. Yang for providing the photographs included in Fig. 1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Science, National Academy of Agriculture Green Development, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Chunjie Li, Chaochun Zhang, Haigang Li & Fusuo Zhang

  2. Soil Biology Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Chunjie Li, Ellis Hoffland & Thomas W. Kuyper

  3. Centre for Crop Systems Analysis, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Chunjie Li, Yang Yu & Wopke van der Werf

  4. College of Grassland, Resources and Environment, Inner Mongolia Agricultural University, Hohhot, China

    Haigang Li

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Contributions

C.L., E.H., T.W.K., C.Z., H.L., F.Z. and W.v.d.W. designed the study. C.L. and Y.Y. collected the data. C.L. and W.v.d.W. performed the statistical analyses and led the writing of the manuscript. All authors reviewed the manuscript and contributed to the interpretation and manuscript revisions.

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Correspondence to Fusuo Zhang or Wopke van der Werf.

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Li, C., Hoffland, E., Kuyper, T.W. et al. Syndromes of production in intercropping impact yield gains. Nat. Plants 6, 653–660 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-020-0680-9

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