Plant Interactions in Mixed Crop Communities

This chapter outlines the principles governing the common forms of interaction between plant genotypes and how they affect the yields of mixed crop communities that is intercrops. The intensity of the interaction observed between components in a mixture must depend on the proportion of interplant contacts that are between individuals of different components. The three main types of intercropping mixed, row and strip-differ greatly in the frequency of intercomponent contacts. Plants require the growth factors light, water, nutrients, oxygen, and carbon dioxide for growth. Allelopathy is "any direct or indirect harmful effect that one plant has on another through the production of chemical compounds that escape into the environment". When grown in an intercrop rather than as a sole crop, all the plants of a component may reach a size equivalent to that of either dominants or suppressed plants in a corresponding sole crop.