Article Sidebar
Article Details
NAJ supports free online communication and exchange of knowledge as the most effective way of ensuring that the fruits of research and development practice are made widely available. It is therefore committed to open access, which, for authors, enables the widest possible dissemination of their findings and, for readers, increases their ability to discover pertinent information. The Journal adopts and uses the CC: BY license and is open access. This license lets others distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the Journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Copyright for articles published in this Journal is retained by the Journal.
Main Article Content
Productivity of Cocoyam/Vegetable Cowpea Intercrop as Influenced by spatial Arrangement and Cowpea Growth Habits
Abstract
Two years field experiments laid out in randomized complete block design were conducted during the 2006 and 2007 wet seasons in the lowland humid forest zone of south-eastern Nigeria to investigate the productivity of cocoyam / vegetable cowpea intercropping as influenced by spatial arrangement and cowpea growth habit. Cocoyam and vegetable cowpea were each planted in monoculture and intercropped within and between rows. The results showed that corm yields obtained from cocoyam intercropped within the row of climbing Akidienu were significantly higher than the yields when combined within erect IT86F-204-1. The erect IT86F-204-1 gave higher fresh pod yield under sole cropping while the climbing Akidienu gave higher fresh pod yield when intercropped within cocoyam plants. Intercropping did not depress cowpea pod yield except where cocoyam was combined between erect IT86F-204-1 in 2006. Assessment of the productivity of the mixtures using LER, ATER and monetary returns showed yield advantages. The highest LER (2.9), ATER (2.5) and net monetary returns (N491,550) (using mean of two years) were obtained when cocoyam was intercropped within the climbing Akidienu vegetable cowpea rows.
Keywords: Productivity, Intercrop and spatial arrangement
