A.J.  Ajayi¹ , S.O.  Agele² , O.P. Aiyelari²

1 Department of Crop Production Technology, Federal College of Agriculture, Akure, PMB 724, Akure, Nigeria
2 Department of Crop Soil and Pest Management, Federal University of Technology, PMB 704, Akure, Nigeria
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Horticulture, 2016, Vol. 6, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/ijh.2016.06.0001
Received: 16 Nov., 2015    Accepted: 06 Jan., 2016    Published: 03 Feb., 2016

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Ajayi A.J., Agele S.O., and Aiyelari O.P., 2016, Growth, yield and yield components of pineapple in a pineapple-pepper-cowpea intercropping system, International Journal of Horticulture, 6(1): 1-7 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2016.06.0001)

The effects of time of sowing cowpea into pineapple-pepper intercrop on growth and yields of pineapple in a pineapple-pepper-cowpea based intercropping system was investigated in the rainy and late seasons of 2011 and 2012 at two locations in Akure, a humid rainforest zone of Nigeria. The experiments which were based on additive series of intercropping system were laid out in randomized complete block design with three replications. Experimental treatments were based on varying time (at 3 weeks intervals) of sowing cowpea into pineapple-pepper intercrop in addition to the sole crops of cowpea, pepper and pineapple. The pineapple growth indices were not influenced significantly by the intercropping. Relatively higher fruit yield was obtained with delayed cowpea introduction of cowpea into the pineapple-pepper intercrop. However, significantly lower pineapple fruit yield (12.8 t/ha) was obtained when cowpea was sown simultaneously at pepper transplanting while fruit yields declined between 70-73 % of sole pineapple and when cowpea was sown at 3, 6 and 9 WAT for the rainy season crop. The decline in fruit yields ranged between 18-39 % when cowpea was sown simultaneously with pepper for the late season crop. 

Intercrop; Additive series; Resource utilisation; Competition; Cropping season; Ananas comosus