The information content of indicators in intercropping research

This paper examines indicators and methods currently used in intercropping research. A review of papers in Experimental Agriculture and Journal of Agricultural Science (Cambridge) in the years 1990-1999 gave 50 papers on intercropping from which 72 experiments were examined. The objectives of experiments, apart from virtually all being concerned with crop yield under intercropping, were dominated by interest in management methods affecting intercropping benefit, with concerns about the economic analysis of intercropping benefits and of the sustainability of tested systems and in the mechanisms underlying intercropping effects. Concerns about stability and sustainability were not as central as might have been expected. Few experiments were mainly concerned with exploring the way in which species interact in mixture as an explanation of…