Abstract: A field experiment was conducted in 2012-2014 with seven planting patterns including apricotpeanut intercropping, apricotmillet intercropping, apricotsweet potato intercropping, and sole apricot, sole peanut, sole millet and sole sweet potato cropping, to investigate the effects of apricot intercropping system on crop yield and land productivity. The results showed that there was a significant difference between intercropping and sole apricot systems (P<0.05), and the average yield of peanut, millet and sweet potato in intercropping system was 62.90%, 54.88% and 64.32% lower than that of sole cropping system in the three years studied, but there was no significant difference in the apricot yield between apricot intercropping and sole apricot cropping (P>0.05). Analysis of yield components showed that 100grain weight, dry weight of pods and dry weight of peanut kernel were the major factors decreasing the yield of peanut in intercropping system; spike length, panicle and panicle weight were the major factors decreasing the yield of millet in intercropping system; fresh weight and dry weight were major the factors decreasing the yield of sweet potato in intercropping system. The land equivalence ratio of the apricot intercropping was more than 1.00, which indicated that the three intercropping patterns had obvious advantages. Specifically, the apricotmillet intercropping was better than the other two, and the land productivity of apricotmillet intercropping was 5.15% and 5.93% higher than that of apricotpeanut intercropping and apricotsweet potato intercropping, respectively. The correlation analysis showed that the land equivalent ratio was significantly positively correlated with crop partial land equivalent ratio (r=0.930^**), and negatively correlated with the harvest index (r=-0.299). Collectively, the apricotmillet intercropping can be suitable for the local ecological environment, and has a good application potential in the development of rainfed agriculture in aeolian, sandy semiarid region of Northeast China.

Key words: winter green manure, February orchid, nitrogen balance, apparent nitrogen loss, soil residual inorganic nitrogen