Soybean (Glycine max L.) is one of the staple oil crops widely planted around the world. However, soybean production is not sufficient to meet the demand for vegetable oil. So far, various cultivation methods have been developed and applied to increase soybean production. One such cultivation method is the recently published ridge-furrow intercropping system of soybean and flax.
The major factor depressing soybean production is excessive vegetative growth due to much rain during the rainy season. Excessive vegetative growth during the flowering stage also causes lodging, fallen petals, fallen pods and yield reduction in soybean.
The ridge-furrow intercropping system of soybean and flax is a new intercropping method that can overcome the excess vegetative growth occurring in the latter half of the growing season and produce high yields by suppressing early growth of soybean by using interspecific competition between crops during intercropping. The intercropping of soybean and flax with ridge-furrow intercrops resulted in higher yields and higher land use rates than the monoculture. In the ridge-furrow intercrop of soybean and flax, soybean is planted in the ridge and flax in the furrow. The degree of early growth inhibition of soybean during the overlapping growth period of soybean and flax is determined by the width of the furrow planted with flax. However, previous studies have not found any effect of flax-planted furrow width on soybean growth and yield.
To determine the effect of flax-planted furrow width on soybean growth and yield in the ridge-furrow intercropping system of soybean and flax, flax was planted in different furrows and the yield characteristics and land use efficiency of soybean were analyzed. The highest yield and land use of soybean was obtained with 20 cm of furrow width planted with flax, 4.9 t/ha and 2.1, respectively. The results show that the use of the ridge-furrow intercropping system of soybean and flax in soybean cultivation requires a furrow width of 20 cm to suppress the excessive vegetative growth and maximize yield and land use.
The result has been published in "European Journal of Agronomy" under the title of "Assessing the influence of furrow width on growth and yield of soybean in ridge-furrow relay intercropping system with flax"(https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eja.2023.126978).
