Review on the positive influence of intercropping systems for organic vegetable growing

Intercropping is considered to be a fundamental tool for ensuring agricultural sustainability and productivity, a matter of major importance in the specific context of the last decades and, mainly, the last two years. Within European agriculture, conventional advantages of intercropping system following laborious experiments were disregarded by farmers because of the justified goal of maximizig profits using affordable pesticides on the market. This determines farmers to focus on increasing the size of their farms, replacing manual labor with a mechanized one, resulting a technological specialization of a few crops at the expense of biodiversity. However, nowadays, following the Covid-19 pandemic and the entire chain of effects it generated, agriculture was directly affected due to the limitation of worldwide transport amplitude and the scarcity of products and raw materials that arose, the price for some of them becoming trully prohibitive (to be seen the case of chemical fertilizers at the end of year 2021). The present paper aims to highligh some paramount matters of using intercropping systems in vegetable crop practice, regarding the perspective of soil, environment, ecosystem biodiversity and economical sustainability.

Integrated management approaches reduced yield loss, and increased productivity in faba bean, due to gall disease in northwestern Ethiopia

A field study was conducted to determine the effects of gall disease on yield and yield components of faba bean at Farta, Ethiopia, in 2019 and 2020. Bayleton spray and/or seed dressing, moderately resistant varieties, and intercropping as treatments were arranged in a split-split plot design with three replications. Results revealed significant (P < 0.01) differences among treatments in disease severity, yield and yield components of faba bean. Highly significant and negative correlations between agronomic and disease parameters were established. Gall disease pressure caused yield losses of 60, 67.61 and 68.61% on Bulga 70-wheat, Bulga 70-mustard intercropping and sole Bulga 70 in untreated plots, respectively. Integration of varieties Degaga and Tumsa with fungicide treatments reduced yield losses and gall disease epidemics, and also increased efficiency of intercropping by 20% over respective sole cropping in both years;and thus, such treatments could be recommended in the study areas and other related agro-ecologies. [ FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Archives of Phytopathology & Plant Protection is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full . (Copyright applies to all s.)

Interplay: A game for the participatory design of locally adapted cereal–legume intercrops

CONTEXT Although cereal–legume intercropping is a recognized approach to improve crop production sustainability, its uptake on European commercial farms remains slow, due to numerous questions raised by the introduction of intercrops in a cropping system. Co-design workshops allow multiple scenarios to be explored without risks. They favor identification of consistent answers to complex problems, considering local conditions and constraints. OBJECTIVE We present Interplay, the serious game we created to support players' exploration of intercrops by designing a wide-range of cereal–legume intercropping scenarios in given cropping system contexts and assessing eight ecosystem services provided by intercrops, i.e., intercropped cereal and legume yields, cereal protein content, nitrogen supply to the following crop, impact on soil structure and weed, insect and disease control. METHODS Interplay aims at being used with groups of farmers and their advisor or students and their agronomy teacher. The game includes a game board and cards to design intercropping scenarios defined by: (i) the cropping system and field context;(ii) the farmers' objectives when introducing an intercrop;(iii) the species to associate and (iv) the crop management. A computer model assesses the ecosystem services provided by the intercropping scenario designed on the game board. The players compare these results to their objectives and to sole crop performances and, if necessary, adjust the scenarios. The players are guided through the design process by a facilitator. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS In the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, we used the game with 70 French agriculture students divided into six groups to design intercropping scenarios improving nitrogen supply to the following crop in a rotation. Students designed scenarios that improved nitrogen supply compared to the initial sole crop, yet cereal yield decreased more than the farmer desired. Guided by the facilitator, students reconsidered the cropping system to improve nitrogen supply at the crop rotation level. Interplay is an interactive tool used to stimulate players' creativity by exploring intercropping scenarios and providing salient, credible and legitimate assessment of the ecosystem services provided. It also promotes knowledge sharing on intercropping and allows redesigning the cropping system completely. Students and teachers who used it declared that it helped enhance their knowledge on intercrops. SIGNIFICANCE Interplay is the first serious game suited to develop the practice of intercropping. It is currently available for cereal–grain legume intercrops sown simultaneously in a random pattern under French soil-climate conditions, but could be adapted to other countries and intercrops.