THE 4C APPROACH AS A WAY TO UNDERSTAND SPECIES INTERACTIONS DETERMINING INTERCROPPING PRODUCTIVITY

Highlights

● The 4C approach considers intercropping performances as the result of joint 4C effects.

● Partial land equivalent ratios indicate which effect(s) are the major one(s).

● A major effect of complementarity is related to a better capture of abiotic resources.

Abstract

Modern agriculture needs to develop transition pathways toward agroecological, resilient and sustainable farming systems. One key pathway for such agroecological intensification is the diversification of cropping systems using intercropping and notably cereal-grain legume mixtures. Such mixtures or intercrops have the potential to increase and stabilize yields and improve cereal grain protein concentration in comparison to sole crops. Species mixtures are complex and the 4C approach is both a pedagogical and scientific way to represent the combination of four joint effects of Competition, Complementarity, Cooperation, and Compensation as processes or effects occurring simultaneously and dynamically between species over the whole cropping cycle. Competition is when plants have fairly similar requirements for abiotic resources in space and time, the result of all processes that occur when one species has a greater ability to use limiting resources (e.g., nutrients, water, space, light) than others. Complementarity is when plants grown together have different requirements for abiotic resources in space, time or form. Cooperation is when the modification of the environment by one species is beneficial to the other(s). Compensation is when the failure of one species is compensated by the other(s) because they differ in their sensitivity to abiotic stress. The 4C approach allows to assess the performance of arable intercropping versus classical sole cropping through understanding the use of abiotic resources.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

compensation / competition / complementarity / cooperation / interspecific interactions / land equivalent ratio / light / nutrients / species mixtures / water

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support received from the European Union through the H2020 ReMIX project (Redesigning European cropping systems based on species mixtures; Grant agreement ID: 727217).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Eric Justes, Laurent Bedoussac, Christos Dordas, Ela Frak, Gaetan Louarn, Simon Boudsocq, Etienne-Pascal Journet, Anastasios Lithourgidis, Chrysanthi Pankou, Chaochun Zhang, Georg Carlsson, Erik Steen Jensen, Christine Watson, and Long Li declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any study with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2021. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)