Abstract

Two field Experiments were carried out at the Research Farm of Nasser’s Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of Aden (Delta Tuban) Lahej Governorate, during 2015/2016 and 2016/2017 seasons, to study the effect of intercropping cowpea with maize on the growth, yield and yield components of maize. This experiment included three inter planting systems and maize only. The following systems were included: - (1:1) a line maize and one cowpea. - (2:1) two lines maize and one line cowpea. - (1:2) one maize and two lines cowpea. - Without intercropping (maize pure planting). The results showed that the different inter planting systems significantly increased the plant height, leaf area, leaf area index, shelling percentage and1000-kernel weight, compared with planting maize only. The highest grain yield of 3.74 and 4.00 tons/hectar under (2:1) pattern, was obtained, compared with the other intercropping treatments in both seasons, respectively. Increasing maize population density significantly increased yields, thus planting without intercropping treatment gave the highest yield of corn, compared with intercropped treatments. This might be due to the reduction in plant density in inter planting system (2:1) to 33.3%, in (1:1) to about 50% and in (1:2) to 66.6%, compared to non- inter planting system.