Effects of varied water regimes on root development and its relations with soil water under wheat/maize intercropping system

Water and radiation use in maize–pea intercropping is enhanced with increased plant density

“…Interaction between these intercrops increased soil water extraction, which increased with increasing maize density. Although intense competition for soil water existed during the wheat-maize co-growth period in previous studies, intercropped maize roots grown under irrigation showed growth recovery, and a water compensation effect for maize was observed after wheat harvest (Ma et al, 2019;Yin et al, 2018). In strip intercropping, irrigation is applied to the entire field during the independent maize growth period after pea T A B L E 4 Grain yield, land equivalent ratio (LER), radiation use efficiency of grain yield and biomass (RUE GY and RUE BM , respectively), and water use efficiency (WUE) of maize-pea intercropping with three maize densities (M/PD1-3, 45,000, 52,500, and 60,000 plants ha -1 , respectively), sole maize with three maize densities 73,600,85,900,and 98,200 harvest, and a portion of the water applied to bare strips may evaporate rather than be captured by plant roots (Mao et al, 2012).…”

“…Interaction between these intercrops increased soil water extraction, which increased with increasing maize density. Although intense competition for soil water existed during the wheat–maize co‐growth period in previous studies, intercropped maize roots grown under irrigation showed growth recovery, and a water compensation effect for maize was observed after wheat harvest (Ma et al., ; Yin et al., ). In strip intercropping, irrigation is applied to the entire field during the independent maize growth period after pea harvest, and a portion of the water applied to bare strips may evaporate rather than be captured by plant roots (Mao et al., ).…”

“…Competition between intercropped wheat and maize for soil water mainly occurred in the 0‐ to 40‐cm soil layer, due to overlapping of roots of wheat and maize occurring mainly in this layer (Ma et al., ). In the present study, soil water extraction of intercropped maize and pea was significantly greater than the corresponding sole crops during the co‐growth period.…”

Evaluating soil nitrate dynamics in an intercropping dripped ecosystem using HYDRUS-2D

“…Similarly, there was a higher SNC in the corn region of the corn/soybean intercropping ecosystem (Chen et al, 2019). Additionally, Ma et al (2018) indicated that both the root length and distribution of wheat significantly increased, while the corn root growth was suppressed in the wheat/corn intercropping ecosystem. It seems that the crop with stronger root activity absorbs resources from the region of the other crop, which may cause the rooting depth of the crop with stronger root activity to decrease while increasing the rooting depth of the crop with weaker root activity.…”

Crop root systems and rhizosphere interactions

“…The availability of soil water and nutrients alter root growth and distribution in intercropping systems (Adiku et al 2001;Liu et al 2015). The effects of wheat/maize intercropping on root development and water uptake under varying water conditions is reported in this issue (Ma et al 2019). The influence of wheat cultivar mixtures on aboveground biomass and grain yield across 2 years with different rainfall was evaluated by Qin et al (2019b).…”