PERFORMANCE OF SUNFLOWER-BUSHBEAN INTERCROPPING UNDER DIFFERENT FERTILIZER LEVELS AND ROW ARRANGEMENTS

Abstract

An experiment was conducted on the performance of sunflower - bushbean intercropping under different fertilizer levels and row arrangements at the Agronomy Field, Sher-e Bangla Agricultural University, Dhaka-1207 during November, 2007 to March. 2008. The trial was laid out in a randomized complete block design with three replications. The treatment comprised of different row arrangement of both crops under varying levels of fertilizer. At maturity, seeds were harvested, while at vegetative stage, harvestable fresh pods of bushbean were considered as yield. Among the intercropping patterns, the highest sunflower equivalent yields 3.317 t/ha and 2.584 t/ha were obtained with paired rows of sunflower followed by two rows of bushbean (2 2) under 120 % recommended dose of sunflower (T 7 ) at both harvestable fresh pod and maturity stages respectively. Highest land equivalent ratios 1.18 and 1 .1 01 were obtained with the same treatment at both harvestable pod and maturity stages respectively. The highest benefit-cost ratio and monetary advantages (1.691 and Tk.16694.41/ha respectively) were obtained also with treatment T 7 when pods of bushbean were harvested at marketable size. When crops were grown for seed production. the highest benefit-cost ratio 1.394 was found from same row arrangement of sunflower followed by one row of bushbean under recommended dose of sunflower (T 3 ) and the highest monetary advantages of Tk. 7826.32/ha from T 7 . So, bushbean may he intercropped with sunflower using 120% recommended fertilizer dose of sunflower and paired rows of sunflower followed by two rows of bushbean (2 2) at both harvestable pod and maturity stage.