last final thesis of umer

Cowpea is tolerant to a wide range of soil textures from sands to heavy, well-drained clays. It
adapts to a wide range of pH although it prefers slightly acid to slightly alkaline soils. It has little
tolerance to salinity (Romain and Raemaekers, 2001). Cowpea is also shade-tolerant and,
therefore, compatible an intercrop with a number of cereals like maize and root crops as well as
with cotton, sugarcane, and several plantation crops (Magashi et al., 2012).
In Jijiga (the study area), farmers harvest only twice in a year, from sole cropping systems. Such
traditional farming systems doesn’t ensure the production of adequate food for the family
especially under the increasing population. It is also true that most farmers of the zone use
traditional cropping systems which are based on poor agricultural inputs, subsistence requirements,
and are not necessarily the most efficient ones. Because of this, crop production per unit land area
is usually below world average. Therefore, in diversified crop production systems having
production constraints, diversified options need to be assessed (Fininsa, 2001).
Intercropping is the simultaneous growing of two or more crops in the same field (Takim, 2012)
and is a cropping system that has long been used for a long-time in tropical areas to increase
productivity and sustainability (Hauggaard-Nieson et al., 2001).
In general, agronomic recommendation for intercropping maize with cowpea and other food
crops is scanty in the study area most especially relating to other row arrangement and optimum
population density of the component crop(s).
1.2 Statement of the problem and justification
Poor soil fertility management, poor crop husbandry and effects of climate change are the major
challenges and contribute for low crop productivity. Agro-ecological intensification of land use is
2