JAUKTIE STĀDĪJUMI DĀRZEŅKOPĪBĀ – IZAICINĀJUMS VAI RISINĀJUMS?

Summary

Demand for organic vegetable products is rapidly growing in Europe and also in Latvia. The bottleneck of fulfilment of consumer’s demands is lacking innovative technologies for intensive vegetable production in organic cropping systems. The depleted soil of decreased productivity is one of the main constrains in organic vegetable production. Therefore seeking for new technologies is crucial for solution the problem. Intercropping, especially strip cropping is foreseen as one of the possible improvements in growing technologies. Scientific literature from different scientific journals all around the world has been used in review article to gather literature on the intercropping efficiency in vegetable production. Summarizing the findings it was stated that intercropping approach is considered to interaction of different factors influencing crop yield and its performance: insect attracting or repellent properties of particular plants caused by their aromatic volatiles; allelopathy effect for inhibiting or stimulating neighbouring organisms; symbiotic atmosphere nitrogen fixation; optimal physical using of belowground and aboveground space; increasing of plant available nutrients in the soil; increased soil microbiological activity. All abovementioned gainings from using of intercropped plants promote environmental sustainability and increases yield potential for particular cropping systems. Those indices can be calculated by precise formulas. One of the broadest used method for evaluation of intercropping efficiency is LER (land equivalent ratio), which is defined as the area of monocropped land, is required to provide the same productivity as the intercropped land. From the literature reviewed it was stated that there is missing scientific data on vegetable intercropping, and especially in northern Europe agroecological conditions.