Korean Journal of Soil Science and Fertilizer ISSN:0367-6315(Print) 2288-2162(Online) 한국토양비료학회 학회지

The mixtures of legumes and non-legume cropping after rice cultivation are widely used for green manure production in Korea. However, there is little information on how the species proportion may affect land use efficient and green manure quality. In this study, green manure N accumulation and Land Equivalent Ratio (LER) was tested with differential seeding ratios using barley and hairy vetch as a green manure. The species proportion influences the biomass production (ranging from 10.74 to 13.34 Mg ha^-1) and N accumulation (ranging from 256.3 to 249.7 kg ha^-1). The N accumulation in hairy vetch mixed, even at 25% of its full sowing proportion, was three times higher than that of pure stand of barley. The N accumulation of barley increased linearly with hairy vetch proportion on the total biomass. The mixtures were more efficient than the pure crops in terms of biomass production (LER>1) and N accumulation (LER>1). Therefore, this results suggest that adopting mixture barley with hairy vetch produce a high amount of biomass with higher quality compared with pure stand of barley.

Land equivalent ratio (LER) for different sowing ratio of barley and hairy vetch in a mixed cropping. Barley and hairy vetch were grown in mixtures with varying seed ratios, relative to full sowing rate, i.e., 25% barley + 75% hairy vetch (B25H75), 50% barley + 50% hairy vetch (B50H50), and 75% barley + 25% hairy vetch (B75H25).