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Book of Abstracts First Legume Society Conference 2013: A Legume Odyssey Novi Sad, Serbia, 9-11 May 2013
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Optimizing durum wheat-grain legumes intercropping through cultivar choice
Bochra Kammoun 1,2 , Laurent Bedoussac 1,3 , Etienne-Pascal Journet 1,4 , Eric Justes 1
1 INRA, UMR1248 AGIR, Castanet-Tolosan, France
2 Université Toulouse, INPT, UMR AGIR, Toulouse, France
3 ENFA, Castanet-Tolosan, France
4 CNRS, UMR2594 LIPM, Castanet-Tolosan, France
Intercropping (IC) is defined as the simultaneous growing of two or more species for a
significant period of their growth.Grain legume-cereal intercropping reveals many potential
advantages in productivity, stability of outputs and ecological sustainability particularly in low Ninput
systems. The advantages of intercrops compared to sole crops (SC) result from interactions
between intercrop components greatly influenced by morphological and physiological traits
among species. The aim of this work is to enhance complementary vs. competitive interactions
between intercroped species by identifying the relevant characteristics of involved cultivars so
that to finally infer cultivars couples adapted to intercropping adressing various production
objectives. A trial was carried out in 2011-2012 at the Auzeville station of the "Institut National
de la Recherche Agronomique". Two durum wheat, four pea and four fababean cultivars chosen
for their contrasting traits were evaluated. All the cultivars were grown as SC, half density SC and
IC in a replacement design to evaluate inter- and intra-specific interactions. Dry weight, leaf area
index, nitrogen content and aerial architecture were determined throughout the growing season,
and yield components at maturity. The first results show that wheat was the strongest competitor
in IC. IC legume grain yield was reduced to less than half compared to SC.However, the IC yield
was greater than the average SC yields. Analysis indicate that legumerelative height and precocity
are the most important factors that influence the performance of the intercropping and should be
used for the design of cultivar ideotype couples performing well as intercrops.
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