SUMMARYField experiments were conducted at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan, Nigeria, during two cropping seasons, with two cultivars of climbing cow peas (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp. subspecies sesquipedalis) cv. FARV-13 and TVU-1209. The work investigated their yields when intercropped with maize, which served as live support.The results showed that there were varietal differences in the cow-pea response to method of planting. Under the intercropped systems, highest dry-matter yield was obtained when TVU-1209 was planted on the same hill with maize while similar yields were obtained with FARV-13 planted in alternate hills with maize. TVU-1209 did not increase maize lodging except when planted in alternate hills with maize, but FARV-13 significantly increased maize lodging under all planting methods. Consequently, FARV-13 reduced maize yields more than TVU-1209.Neither pod length nor pod weight was affected by the planting. Highest yields from both cow pea and maize combined were realized from TVU-1209 planted between rows of maize. The yield of FARV-13 cow pea intercropped with maize did not show any advantage due to intercropping over sole crop of each.
In field experiments at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture in Nigeria, two cow-pea cultivars, TVU-1209 and FARV-13 and a composite maize cultivar were intercropped at plant densities of 10000, 20000, 30000 and 40000 plants/ha in a split-plot design. There were four replications of each density. Results showed that increasing cow-pea plant density increased the number of days to flowering but decreased the numbers of branches and of leaves per plant in both monoculture and mixture. Different varietal responses to plant density were observed for other growth measurements. While TVU-1209 yielded the highest dry matter at 20000 plants/ha in monoculture and mixture, FARV-13 did so at 40000 plants/ha in monoculture and at 20000 in mixture. Some yield components decreased while others were unaffected by increasing plant density. Similar response pattern was observed for maize. Both leaf area index and light interception were greater in FARV-13 than in T VU-1209.
SUMMARYLeaf area index is an important parameter in many agronomic and physiological studies, but its determination in cowpea (Vigna unguiculata) and soyabean (Glycine max) is difficult and time consuming. A simple and rapid method is described in which dry weights of the middle leaflets were used to predict leaf areas of cowpea and soyabean. This method was based on results which indicated that leaf dry weights were highly correlated to leaf areas and that the ratio between leaf area of the terminal leaflet and total area of a trifoliate leaf was constant, at least in some cultivars, giving ratios of 0.37 for cowpea and 0.33 for soyabean.
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