Fig 1.
Average daily soil temperature (°C) at 9 cm and precipitation in 2019 (A) and 2020 (B). Meteorological data from Zanjan University Meteorological Station (from 2018–19 through 2019–20), available in (http://www.znu.ac.ir/weather).
Fig 2.
Schematic diagram of saffron and chickpea intercropping based on row replacement series.
(C1) saffron mono-crop, (C2) chickpea mono-crop, (C3) 1saffron:1chickpea, (C4) 2saffron:2chickpea, (C5) 2saffron:1chickpea, and (C6) 3saffron:1chickpea, respectively. Saffron corms and chickpea seeds were planted with 25-cm row spacing.
Table 1.
Water quantity and the time of application.
Table 2.
Physical and chemical properties of farm soil.
Table 3.
Combine analysis of the effect of irrigation regimes (I), and intercropping system (C) on weed control and weed diversity properties.
Table 4.
Weed flora composition of the experimental site.
Fig 3.
Interaction effect of irrigation regimes and intercropping system on weed density (a) and weed biomass (b) by two years. Different letters indicate a significant difference (LSD’s significant difference test, P≤0.05). Planting ratios of saffron:chickpea, (C1) saffron mono-crop, (C2) chickpea mono-crop, (C3) 1saffron:1chickpea, (C4) 2saffron:2chickpea, (C5) 2saffron:1chickpea, and (C6) 3saffron:1chickpea, respectively.
Fig 4.
Bar plots of mean values of both, the (Shannon index) (a), Pielou index (b), and species richness (c) for the irrigation regimes. Different letters indicate a significant difference (LSD’s significant difference test, P≤0.05).
Fig 5.
Bar plots of mean values of both, e(Shannon index) (a), Pielou index (b) and species richness (c) for the intercropping systems in 2019 and 2020 years. Different letters indicate a significant difference (LSD’s significant difference test, P≤0.05). Planting ratios of saffron:chickpea (C1) saffron mono-crop, (C2) chickpea mono-crop, (C3) 1saffron:1chickpea, (C4) 2saffron:2chickpea, (C5) 2saffron:1chickpea, and (C6) 3saffron:1chickpea, respectively.
Fig 6.
Bar plots of mean values of both the (Shannon index) (a) and species richness (b) for the year effect. Different letters indicate a significant difference (LSD’s significant difference test, P≤0.05).