Determination of Effective Spatial Arrangement for Intercropping of Maize (Zea mays L.) and Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) Using Competition Indices Ethiopia

Copyright: © 2015 Bantie YB. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. An experiment was conducted on the determination of effective spatial arrangement for intercropping of maize and potato using competition indices at South Wollo, Ethiopia for two consecutive years, 2010-2011. The objective of the study was to determine effective spatial arrangement for intercropping of maize and potato. The treatments were 1 maize:1 potato, 2 maize:2 potato, 1 maize:2 potato (a), 2 maize:1 potato (a), 1 maize:2 potato (b) and 2 maize:1 potato (b). Sole maize and sole potato was used for comparison. JMP 5 (SAS) software’s were used to compute the analysis of variance. The combined yield advantages in terms of total land equivalent ratio (LER) and Income equivalent ratio (IER) indices were greatest in the cases of 1 maize:1 potato followed by 1 maize:2 potato (b) intercropping arrangement. Area time equivalent ratio (ATER) values showed an advantage of 75.0 % only in 1 maize:1 potato. Effective Monetary advantage (EMAI) index was highest in 1 maize:2 potato (b)followed by 1 maize: 1 potato intercropping arraignments. However, Competitive ratio (CR) values for all crops in all intercropping arrangements were less than one indicating both crops are equally competitive. Based on the this findings, 1 maize: 1 potato followed by 1 maize:2 potato (b) intercropping arrangement gave the highest PRY, LER,ATER, IER an