Increasing Yield of Colored Rice through Rice-Peanut Intercropping under Aerobic Irrigation Systems

An increased yield of cereal crops, such as maize and rice, can be achieved through intercropping them with legume crops, such as peanut, soybean, and mungbean. In additive series, population of the main crops, such as rice, is the exactly same between intercropping and monocropping systems, but in the replacement series of intercropping, it becomes only 50%. On average, grain yield per clump of rice plants grown under aerobic irrigation systems was increased by intercropping with peanut both under additive and replacement series of intercropping systems. Under additive series, relay-planting (adding) one row of peanut between double rows of red rice was found to significantly increase grain yield of red rice per clump or per unit area, mainly due to increases in panicle number per clump, filled-grain number per panicle, and weight of 100 grains or harvest index. Under replacement series, however, intercropping black rice with peanut under 2:2 row proportion resulted in significant competition between black rice and peanut plants, resulting in lower grain yield of the black rice in intercropping than in monocropping systems, if they were fertilized only with NPK fertilizers. However, application of organic and biofertilizer containing arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF), in addition to NPK fertilizers, significantly increased grain yield of the black rice, resulting in significantly higher grain yield of the intercropped than the monocropped black rice plants. Therefore, adoption of additive intercropping of rice with legume crops under aerobic irrigation systems could be a better choice to increase rice yield per unit area.