Sustainable land use options for optimum resources use in maize based cropping system on uplands of Western Thailand
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Sustainable land use options for optimum resources use in maize based cropping system on uplands of Western Thailand Khalid Hussain . Ayesha Ilyas . Chalermchart Wongleecharoen . Thomas Hilger . Aftab Wajid . Ashfaq Ahmad . Georg Cadisch
Received: 25 April 2020 / Accepted: 19 September 2020 Ó Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Worldwide, soil degradation due to erosion is still a major issue. Minimum tillage, intercropping, and alley cropping are important features of conservation agriculture and food security, but the farming communities are reluctant to accept these practices due to area reduction and plant competition. We investigated maize sole cropping (T1) as current farmers’ practice; T2: maize intercropped with chilies, tillage and fertilization; T3: maize-chili intercrop, mini. tillage, fertilization, Jack-bean relay cropping; T4: Like T3 but with hedges; T5 and T6 like T3 and T4, respectively, but without fertilization on Thai uplands during 2010 and 2011. Maize above ground biomass (AGB) was higher in T2 than T1 during both years. Light use efficiency (LUE) for AGB was 1.44–1.56 and 1.44–1.96 g DM MJ-1 in T4 during 2010 and 2011, 17–47% higher than T1, respectively. Land equivalent ratio was 1.23 and 1.17 in T2 while 1.28 and 1.21 in T4 during 2010 and 2011, respectively. Maize grain K. Hussain (&) A. Ilyas A. Wajid A. Ahmad Agro-Climatology Laboratory, Department of Agronomy, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, Pakistan e-mail: [email protected] K. Hussain C. Wongleecharoen T. Hilger G. Cadisch Institute of Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics (HansRuthenberg-Institute) (490), University of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, Germany C. Wongleecharoen Department of Soil Science, Kasetsart University, Bangkok, Thailand
nitrogen (Ng) was significantly lower in unfertilized treatments. Intercropping with soil conservation enhanced land use efficiency with soil protection against erosion. Understanding spatial variations of LUE, Ng, as well as their impact on crop productivity are useful for fine-tuning crop management in conservation agriculture and sustainable land use on uplands. Keywords Hedgerows Intercropping Land use options Leaf area index Light use efficiency LER Maize
Introduction Maize is included in cash crops of Asia. It is projected that demand of maize in developing countries will increase by 2020 which overtake wheat and rice while 60% of that increase will be observed in Asia (IFPRI 2003). Maize, however, is strongly susceptible to erosion during heavy rains, particularly during juvenile growth when soil cover is poor on uplands (Hilger et al. 2013). In Thailand, 34% of uplands agriculture is severely threatened by top soil loss due to water erosion (Pansak et al. 2010). In the future, agriculture must produce more food from less area of land to meet people’s food demand through an efficient use of natural resources with as minimal impact on the environment as possible (Hobbs et al. 2008). Sustainable cropping systems
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