DOI: https://doi.org/10.14456/jsat.2025.5
Abstract
Due to high population pressure / human activities competing for agriculture land, the need to maximize
productivity of available land has become necessary; this has not been achievable in the tropics with monoculture
systems where single harvest per season is the practice. Thus, this study evaluates crop combination and tillage
practice on yield and yield components of groundnut in mixture with maize. The trial was conducted in the rainy
seasons of 2020 and 2021, at the Kogi State University Students’ Research and Demonstration Farm; Latitude 70
301 and Longitude 70 091 E in the Southern Guinea Savannah agro-ecological zone of Nigeria. Treatment consisted
of three tillage practices (main plot factor) and five crop combinations (subplot factor) assigned to a 3 x 5 Factorial
experiment replicated four times. Sole cropped groundnut performed better than the intercrops regarding yield and
yield related parameters. Better haulm yields were obtained in sole cropped plots (711.11 kg/ha and 637.04 kg/ha,
respectively in 2020 and 2021 seasons; better pod yields: 1,532 kg/ha and 1,367 kg/ha, respectively in 2020 and
2021 seasons, better Harvest Index (53.26% and 36.78%, respectively in 2020, 2021 cropping seasons). The
treatment recorded the best 100-seed weight in both seasons: 47.83, and 48.32g, respectively in 2020, 2021 cropping
seasons. It also gave the best shelling percentage: 61.00% and 79.42%, respectively in 2020, 2021 cropping seasons.
Relative to LER, among crop combination, the highest LERs were observed when one row of maize was
intercropped with one row of groundnut (1.38 and 1.32, respectively in 2020 and 2021 cropping seasons) with the
least LER observed when two rows of maize were intercropped with one row of groundnut (1.28 and 1.19,
respectively in 2020 and 2021 seasons). Among the tillage practice, zero tillage gave the highest LER (1.28 and
1.42, respectively in 2020 and 2021 seasons) with planting on ridges giving the least LER (1.06 and 1.38,
respectively in 2020 and 2021 cropping seasons). Since the highest LER was observed when one row of maize was
intercropped with one row of groundnut, this level of crop combination is recommended for the study area.
Keywords: Canopy height, leaf number, haulm yield / ha, pod yield / ha, harvest index and shelling percentage
Received: October 2, 2025. Revised: November 23, 2025. Accepted: November 24, 2025.
