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Effects of rice and water spinach intercropping on the growth, yield, and pest control of rice.

NING Chuan-chuan1,2, CHEN Quan-yang1, HU Hong-jie1, LUO Shi-ming1,2, CAI Kun-zheng1,2*#br#   

  1. (1 College of Natural Resources and Environment, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China; 2 Key Laboratory of Tropical AgroEnvironment, Ministry of Agriculture, Guangzhou 510642, China).
  • Online:2017-10-10 Published:2017-10-10

Abstract: Intercropping is a good cropping practice to efficiently utilize light, heat, water and soil. However, most previous studies of intercropping have focused on upland crops. The present study was carried out to explore the effects of rice and water spinach intercropping on growth, dry matter accumulation, pest control and yield of rice by field trials of continuous two years (2014-2015)/four seasons. The experiment included five treatments: Rice monoculture, water spinach monoculture, rice and water spinach intercropping at three ratios (2∶2, 3∶2 and 4∶2). The results showed that rice and water spinach intercropping had no significant effect on plant height and chlorophyll content of rice, but significantly increased the number of tiller and aboveground biomass of rice. Intercropping significantly increased rice yield per unit area mainly by increasing effective panicles, total grains and even seed setting rate. Rice yield advantage of the three intercropping patterns was shown as 2∶2 > 3∶2 > 4∶2. In addition, rice and water spinach intercropping reduced the incidence levels of rice sheath blight by 39.8%-68.8% and leaf folders by 36.7%-56.0%. Our results suggested that rice and water spinach intercropping is a feasible ecological agriculture model in controlling diseases and pests through enhancing biodiversity and increasing rice crop yields.

Key words: phenological stage, deciduous broad-leaved mixed plantation, K+, Na+