Productivity Responses of Spice and Vegetable Crops in Citrus Juvenile Orchard

Abstract

Citrus is an economy crop usually grown at wide spacings into which staple food can be grown before the canopy closes up. Therefore, field experiments were conducted in 2010 and 2011 at the National Horticultural Research Institute, Ibadan to evaluate the response of three spices and one vegetable crop as intercrops with juvenile citrus at different spacing regimes.  Citrus was intercropped with pepper, turmeric, ginger and basil at three inter spacing regimes of 1 m, 2 m and 3 m from the juvenile citrus trees with sole citrus and the sole crop of each of the components as control. The experiment was laid in randomized complete block design in three replication.  Results showed that growth and yield of the juvenile citrus trees were not significantly affected by the component crops except in citrus/turmeric intercrop where significant decrease in plant height was observed in 2010. Basil plant height in the intercrop was significantly higher at 1m and 3m than other intercrops at 10WAP in both years, while pepper and turmeric heights were significantly higher at 3m spacing from the juvenile citrus trees than that of ginger at 20 WAP in 2010. Pepper produced higher number of fruits at 3m in 2010 and 2m in 2011 while that of turmeric was higher at 1m in 2010 and 2m in 2011 than the other corresponding spacing regimes which in turn were higher than the yields under their corresponding sole crops.  Yields of ginger under the spacing regimes were significantly lower than what was obtained in the other intercrops and sole ginger in both years while basil produced higher leaf yield at 2m (269 g/plant) than at 1m and 3m. Pepper, turmeric and basil responded positively in the intercrop with juvenile citrus trees than ginger and can be adopted by farmers.

Keywords: Citrus, intercrop, juvenile, spices, vegetable, alleys