Legume-cereal intercropping as a weed management tool

Summary in the original language of the document

Weed density and biomass is often markedly reduced in intercrops (IC) compared to the respective sole crops (SC). Such IC-weed control advantages by either (i) Weed-suppression; a more effec-tive use of resources by IC or suppressing weed growth through allelopathy compared to SC or (ii) Weed-tolerance; use of resources that are not exploitable by weeds or convert resources to harvestable material more efficiently than SC. A higher degree of interspecific competition combined with a certain complementarity between intercropped species improves the crop stands competitive ability towards weeds. The weed-suppression approach from Liebman and Dyck (1993) are the most likely to explain the presented pea-barley IC findings.