Fig 1.
Air temperature and rainfall in the experimental site from May to September (during the sowing and harvesting of soybean) in 2015 and 2016.
A: year 2015; B: year 2016. Data were obtained from Wenjiang Weather Bureau, Sichuan, China.
Fig 2.
Maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and sole cropping system of soybean.
A1: “50 cm + 50 cm” one row of maize and one row of soybean; A2: “160 cm + 40 cm” two rows of maize with wide-narrow row planting, where two rows of soybeans were planted in wide row with 40 cm; and with 60 cm row spacing between maize and soybean. CK: row spacing of soybeans in the sole cropping system was 70 cm.
Fig 3.
Changes in the spectral radiance of soybean canopy in maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and sole cropping system.
Table 1.
Light distribution of soybean canopy under A1, A2, and CK treatments in the V5 stage of soybean growth in 2015 and 2016.
Fig 4.
Changes in the morphological characteristics of soybean in the maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and sole cropping system in 2015 and 2016.
Bars represented by different small letters within each group in the same growth stage are significantly different at the 0.05 probability level. Values are means ± SD of three replicates.
Table 2.
Changes in the aboveground biomass accumulation and distribution of soybean in the maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and sole cropping system.
Table 3.
Soybean leaf photosynthetic pigments in maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and sole cropping system (mg·dm−2).
Table 4.
Soybean leaf photosynthetic characteristics in maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and sole cropping system.
Fig 5.
Changes in the leaf anatomical structure of soybean in the maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and the sole cropping system.
A, B and C: A1, A2 and CK (V5 stage), respectively; D, E and F: A1, A2 and CK (R1 stage), respectively.
Table 5.
Leaf anatomical structure of soybean in the maize-soybean relay-strip intercropping system and the sole cropping system.
Table 6.
Soybean yield and component factors in maize–soybean relay-strip intercropping systems.