Consórcio mamona x culturas alimentícias em diferentes arranjos espaciais.

Abstract

The consortium consists of the simultaneous cultivation of two or more crops in the same area, as a strategy to reduce the risk of activity before the irregularity climatic very common in semiarid regions. This study aimed to evaluate productive characteristics, gross income and Efficient Use of Land (UET) of the castor bean plants with cowpea bean in monocrop and intercropped with castor bean and maize monocrop and intercrop under different planting arrangements in a regime rainfed semiarid region in the central interior of Ceará. Two experiments were conducted in Farm Lavoura Seca, owned by the Federal University of Ceará in Quixadá / Ceará, Brazil, between April and August 2011. The experimental delineate for both experiments was a randomized block with six treatments and four repetitions. Populations desired been obtained varying the number of plants within the row, with alternate single rows. The plots were composed by four rows of each crop, which was used as a useful plots just the two central rows. The treatments consisted of monoculture castor bean, cowpea and maize, by using 10,000, 40,000 and 40,000 plants ha-1 respectively and other consortiums: (castor bean 10,000 + 40,000 cowpea or maize); (castor bean 5,000 + 40,000 cowpea or maize); (castor bean 10,000 + 20,000 cowpea or maize); (castor bean 5,000 + 20,000 cowpea or maize) plants ha-1. The higher productivity of castor bean was obtained using 10,000 plants ha-1 both consortia with cowpea as an in monocrop, independent of population of beans. Since when consortia with maize, the factor that most affect the yield was the increase of maize population, in detriment of reducing the population of the castor bean. The highest yields of cowpea were found in the monoculture and did not differ statistically from consortiums (castor bean 5,000 +40,000 cowpea) and (castor bean 5,000 +20,000 cowpea) plants ha-1. All of the arrangements between castor bean and cowpea were efficient in land use, have dominated the castor bean in all consortia, being more competitive and compromising the quality of the same.