Effect of spatial arrangement on the incidence of virus diseases associated with cowpea intercropped with maize

Abstract

Virus diseases have constituted great constraint to cowpea production leading to reduced yields, it is important to evolve control strategies that is ecologically friendly and sustainable. A field experiment was carried out at the Teaching and Research Farm of the University of Ilorin, Kwara State-Nigeria (8.29°N and 4.41°E), during the 2010 cropping season to evaluate the effect of spatial arrangement on the incidence of virus diseases associated with cowpea intercropped with maize. This is with the view to determining if this method which is cheap and easy to apply could be effective in virus control. The experiment was laid out as a randomized complete block design. The treatments were three arrangement pattern of cowpea-maize-cowpea-maize, cowpea-cowpea-maize-maize and sole cowpea (control). Each of the treatments was replicated three times and these were randomly assigned to the plots. The results of the experiment showed that although incidence of virus diseases existed in all the treatments, there were differences between them. Significantly lowest virus disease incidence was obtained in plots with cowpea-maize-cowpea-maize arrangement. This intercropping arrangement also led to the highest yield parameters compared to the other two treatments. Plots with sole cowpea had the highest incidence of viruses and consequently lowest yield attributes. The results indicated that intercropping and component plant arrangement could be effective in reducing virus incidence. © 2012 Academic Journals Inc.