Kasaye Abera* and Berhane Sibhatu
Limited farmland size owned by smallholding farmer is one of the challenges to increase crop production and productivity at the study area in particular and in the country at large. Accordingly, famers have a long standing traditional knowledge of growing multiple crop types in different cropping patterns. Intercropping is one of the crop combination systems practiced by resource poor farmers to increase crop production per unit area of land per year and reduce the risks to food and cash sources. The study was conducted to determine Evaluation of Sorghum-Pulse Intercrops for Yield of Component Crops in Mehoni District, Northern Ethiopia. The experiment was conducted during 2010 and 2011 cropping seasons. The treatments were included four legume crops (Dekoko, mung bean, common bean and cowpea) and one variety of sorghum and also sole crops of each crop and a total of nine treatments. The experiment was conducted in randomized complete block design with three replication. Data on growth, yield and yield components of the two crops were recorded and statistically analyzed. The analysis of variance showed that the growth parameters of sorghum plant height was significant effect (<0.05). The result showed that the maximum plant height (181.7 cm) was recorded from sorghum intercrop with common bean. More over the yield components of sorghum was highly significant difference ( < 0.01) and maximum result of most sorghum yield components obtained from sorghum intercrop with legume than sole cropping. However the maximum grain yield (4276 kgha-1) of sorghum was recorded from sorghum intercrop with common bean. And also the maximum land equivalent ratio (2.86) was recorded from it. It showed that more efficient systems from a land use point of view than sole crop. Generally intercropping system was more efficient than sole cropping system for the study area and especially in limited farmland size to increase crop production.
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