The Economic Evaluation of Crops Intercropping by Using Soilless Culture System

• Abdulraheem Assi Obaid

  Author

Soilless culture systems are considered one of the modren technologies in horticultural crop production and this systems follows an intensive farming method with the aim of increasing production per unit area .The study aimed to evaluation the economic feasibility of the soilless culture system, and used intercropping method between tomato plants (main plant) with strawberry plants (sub plant) at the multiple planting densities. Main  plots represented loading of tomato plants with strawberry plants and included tow caces: L₀(tomato only) and L₁( intercropped with strawberry plants (1:1) by using four replicates, within replicates, factorial experiment carried out according to RCBD design and consist of two factors as follows: planting distances (D₃₀cm and D₄₀cm) and foliar application by Biozyme (untreated B₀, treated with biozyme B₁). The results revealed that the treatment D₄₀L₀B₁ had superiority in plant yield (4.74kg.plant^-1), while the treatment combination D₃₀L₀B₁ had superiority in the productivity (23.75kg m²). Financial analysis for the experiment showed in Table 5 Recorded the highest net profit reached 5327.2 dinar for the treatment combinations D₄₀L₀B₁, while  the highest summation  of total profit was 7061.4 recorded for the treatment combinations D₄₀L₁B₀ . It was striking in the results of Table 5,  and the treatment D₃₀L₁B₁ had lowest profit net when  reached 1733.52 dinars, the reason is the lack of tomato yield within a distance of 30 cm, as well strawberry plant, which could not reach the threshold of cultivation costs in the financial return.

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