Impact of fruit-tree shade intensity on the growth, yield, and quality of intercropped wheat

Abstract

Agroforestry is a common traditional practice in China-especially in the southern Xinjiang of Northwest China. However, the productivity of many agroforestry systems has been lower than expected in recent years, highlighting the need for an actionably deep mechanistic understanding of the competition between crops and trees. Here, we chose 3 different fruit tree/wheat intercropping agroforestry systems to investigate influence of different fruit tree shade intensity on the growth, yield and quality of intercropping wheat: jujube/wheat, apricot /wheat, and walnut /wheat. We found that compared to the monoculture wheat system, the mean daily shade intensity of the jujube-, apricot-, and walnut-based intercropping systems were, respectively, 23.2%, 57.5%, and 80.7% shade. The photosynthetic rate of wheat in the jujube-, apricot-, and walnut-based intercropping systems decreased by, respectively, 11.3%, 31.9%, and 36.2% compared to monoculture wheat, and the mean number of fertile florets per spike decreased by 26.4%, 37.4%, and 49.5%. Moreover, the apricot- and walnut-based intercropping systems deleteriously affected grain yield (constituent components spike number, grains per spike, and thousand grain weight) and decreased the total N, P, and K content of intercropping wheat. Tree shading intensity strongly enhanced the protein content, wet gluten content, falling number, dough development time, and dough stability time of wheat, but significantly decreased the softening degree. Strong negative linear correlations were observed between tree shade intensity and the number of fertile florets, grain yield (including spike number, grains per spike, and thousand grain weight), nutrient content (N, P and K), and softening degree of wheat. In contrast, we found that daily shade intensity was positively linearly correlated with protein content, wet gluten content, falling number, dough development time, and dough stability time. We conclude that jujube-based intercropping systems can be practical in the region, as they do not decrease the yield and quality of intercropping wheat. Further research should focus on the above-ground/below-ground interspecific interactions and the mechanisms behind the observations that we observed amongst the intercropping systems.