ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Agron.

Sec. Agroecological Cropping Systems

Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fagro.2025.1562589

Biofertilizers enhance land-use efficiency in intercropping across crop mixtures and spatial arrangements

Provisionally accepted
Santiago Pérez-BernalSantiago Pérez-Bernal1*Mathimaran NatarajanMathimaran Natarajan1,2,3Matadadoddi Nanjundegowda ThimmegowdaMatadadoddi Nanjundegowda Thimmegowda4Joseph Davis BagyarajJoseph Davis Bagyaraj5Ansgar KahmenAnsgar Kahmen1
  • 1University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
  • 2Agriculture University, Jodhpur, Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India
  • 3Centre for South Asian Studies, School of Social Sciences and International Studies, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry, Puducherry, India
  • 4University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, Bangalore, Karnataka, India
  • 5Centre for Natural Biological Resources and Community Development, Bangalore, India

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Intercropping is a common cropping practice that takes advantage of plant diversity and plant complementarity to increase land-use efficiency. Biofertilizers centered around arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are supplements to mineral fertilizers well-known for their far-reaching beneficial effects on plants such as increased drought resistance and increased yields. This study tested if the combination of intercropping and biofertilizers can enhance land-use efficiency (overyielding) using staple crops from southern India. Specifically, the role of different combinations of plant species (crop mixtures) and spatial arrangements mediating overyielding in intercropping was tested. Biofertilizer inoculation increased yields in both monocropping and intercropping. In intercropping, grain yield improved by an average of 23% over the control, regardless of the crop mixture or spatial arrangement. Positive crop-typespecific mycorrhizal growth responses (MGR) and overyielding across experimental treatments and sites indicate that combining biofertilizers with intercropping significantly enhances land-use efficiency in the semi-arid tropics. These findings have practical implications for improving the productivity of intercropping systems in dryland agricultural systems, particularly under resourcelimited conditions.

Keywords: mycorrhiza, AMF, biofertilizer, intercropping, land-use efficiency

Received: 17 Jan 2025; Accepted: 22 Apr 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Pérez-Bernal, Natarajan, Thimmegowda, Bagyaraj and Kahmen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Santiago Pérez-Bernal, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material