PRODUCTIVITY ENHANCEMENT AND WATER USE EFFICIENCY OF PEANUT-MILLET INTERCROPPING

Peanut-millet intercropping is a new planting pattern in northeastern China to deal with scarce oil-bearing crops' products and severe wind erosion in peanut fields. Land productivity and water use efficiency are the important factors that affect the application of this planting, pattern. In this research, two peanut-millet intercropping patterns were studied in comparison with sole planting pattern of peanut or foxtail millet to reduce water consumption and improve water use efficiency. One intercropping system was 2P2M (2-row peanut with 2-row millet), and the other was 4P2M (4-row peanut with 2-row millet). Some indices were calculated to characterize the intercropping efficiency of land and water use as compared to those of sole crops of peanut and foxtail millet. The results showed that land equivalent ratio (LER) of two peanut-millet intercropping patterns ranged from 1.15 to 1.19, while water equivalent ratio (WER) ranged from 1.17 to 1.22, and Delta WU, the relative departure of actual water use in intercropping from expected use, was close to zero, indicated that peanut-millet intercropping increased the productivity but didn't increase the water consumption. The foxtail millet in the intercropping population gained more water compared with peanut; the soil water of foxtail millet strips in the 2P2M and 4P2M increased 69% and 45%, respectively, as compared with that of peanut strips after a 58.8mm rainfall during the midterm of crops growth. These findings suggest that the rainfall's distribution in the soil of different crops was optimized in the peanut-millet intercropping system.