Response of Sesame to Intercropping with Groundnut and Cowpea

Abstract

Sustainable food production is one of the major challenges of the twenty-first century in the era of global environmental problems such as climate change, increasing population, and natural resource degradation. Therefore, intercropping approach to sustainable food production is the need of hour to overcome this global issue. Field experiments were conducted under rain-fed conditions for two consecutive rainy seasons (2015/2016-2016/2017) at North Kordofan Estate, Sudan, to investigate the effects of intercropping sesame with groundnut and cowpea on its growth, yield components, and Land Equivalent Ratio (LER). The experiment consisted of nine treatments: three sole crops of sesame (S), groundnut (G) and cowpea (C) and six spatial arrangements of 1S:1G or C, 1S:2G or C, and 2S:1G or C row/s of sesame with each groundnut and cowpea. The treatments were arranged in a Randomized Complete Block Design with four replications. The results showed that intercropping had a significant (P