Quinoa–Olive Agroforestry System Assessment in Semi-Arid Environments: Performance of an Innovative System
2024
Ilham Abidi | Khalid Daoui | Aziz Abouabdillah | Loubna Belqadi | Hamid Mahyou | Didier Bazile | Ahmed Douaik | Fatima Gaboun | Abdel Aziz Hassane Sidikou | Si Bennasseur Alaoui
Agroforestry is a promising way to sustain land use efficiency in semi-arid areas. In this study, we introduce quinoa as a drought- and salinity-tolerant crop in olive-based agroforestry. We investigated how the microclimate created by olive trees affects agronomic and biochemical traits in quinoa and evaluated the performance of this new olive-based agroforestry system in terms of land equivalent ratio (LER). Field experiments were carried out under two pedoclimatic conditions (S1) and (S2) using a randomized complete block design with two cropping systems (sole crop (SCS) and agroforestry (AFS) systems), four quinoa cultivars (Puno, Titicaca, ICBA-Q5, and ICBA-Q4) and one olive orchard as a control (OR) in each block. Our results show that AFS had lower grain yield (&minus:45%), dry biomass (&minus:49%), and crop water productivity (&minus:44%), but higher plant height (12%), grain protein (4%), saponin (26%), total polyphenol (12%), and DPPH (9%) contents compared to SCS. The highest grain yield was recorded for Titicaca and ICBA-Q5 (1.6 t ha&minus:1). The LER ranged from 1.57 to 2.07, indicating that the overall productivity was 57% to 107% higher in the agroforestry system compared with the monoculture. We suggest that quinoa&ndash:olive tree intercropping could be a promising agroecological practice under semi-arid conditions.
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