Forage Potential of Intercropping Barley with Faba Bean, Lupin, or Field Pea

Abstract

Annual cool‐season grain legumes grown in mixtures with barley (Hordeum vulgare L.), may offer advantages over barley sole crops for forage production. Our objective was to evaluate the effects of intercropping ‘Snowbird’ tannin‐free faba bean (Vicia faba L.), ‘Arabella’ narrow‐leafed lupin (Lupinus angustifolius L.), and ‘Cutlass’ field pea (Pisum sativum L.), along with legume planting densities (LPD) on forage yields, nutritive value, and economic returns. Field studies were conducted at three sites in the Parkland region of Alberta, Canada, in 2004 and 2005. Each legume was planted at 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0× their recommended sole crop planting density with ‘Niobe’ barley at 0.25× the recommended sole crop planting density. A barley sole crop was also included for comparison. Increasing the LPD from 0.5 to 2.0× did not effect forage dry matter (DM) but it increased the proportion of legume in the forage DM from 39 to 63%, protein concentration from 119 to 132 g kg−1, and acid detergent lignin (ADL) from 36 to 42 g kg−1 while it decreased neutral detergent fiber (NDF) from 465 to 422 g kg−1. Faba bean–barley, lupin–barley, and pea–barley intercrops had 64, 27, and 55% higher protein yields, respectively, compared to sole crop barley. Faba bean–barley and lupin–barley had similar forage DM yields which were 1.5 Mg ha−1 and 1.3 Mg ha−1 less than pea–barley and sole barley crops, respectively. Intercrops of Cutlass pea and Niobe barley offered the most favorable combination of forage DM yields, nutritive value, and economic returns.

Intercropping patterns and different farming systems affect the yield and yield components of safflower and bitter vetch

“…The competitive abilities of component crops can be defined in terms of aggressivity, relative crowding coefficient (K) and competitive ratio (Bhatti et al 2006;Wahla et al 2009). In general, non-legume crop is considered a suppressing crop in annual legume/non-legume intercrop system (Haynes 1980;Wahla et al 2009), for example, soybean/ wheat (Li et al 2001), peanut/maize (Inal et al 2007) and faba bean/barley (Strydhorst et al 2008).…”

Review: Redesigning Canadian prairie cropping systems for profitability, sustainability, and resilience

“…Mixtures of annual cereals and legumes can produce large amounts of high-quality forage biomass (Carr et al 1998(Carr et al , 2004Strydhorst et al 2008).…”

Nitrogen leaching and residual effect of barley/field bean intercropping

“…Intercropping grass and legume is promoted to increase yield per unit surface area and yield stability (Strydhorst et al 2008). In temperate climates, cereal-legume intercropping has been more successful when used for forage than grain production (Anil et al 1998).…”

“…Forage obtained from cereal/ legume intercrops (IC) always has a higher quality than that of cereal sole crops (SC), while dry matter yield advantage varies, due to large differences in growth conditions (Dordas and Lithourgidis 2011). Intercrop yield is generally between that of SC (Carr et al 2004, Strydhorst et al 2008, or higher than both of them (Karpenstein-Machan and Stuelpnagel 2000, Ghanbari-Bonjar and Lee 2003, Lithourgidis and Dordas 2010, Mariotti et al 2012. According to Pursiainen and Tuori (2008), also silage produced from a cereal/pulse legume mixture has a higher nutritive value compared to that produced only from cereals, due to the higher concentration of crude protein, a higher degradability of nutrients and a better balance of protein and energy for rumen microbes.…”