What are the advantages of inter-cropping and crop rotation?

Advantages of crop rotation are:

(i) Reduces crop failure

(ii) Increases the variations in crops cultivated on the same field.

(iii) Enhances soil fertility.

(iv) Prevents soil erosion.

(v) Replenish or reflourish soil nutrients.

(vi) Reduction in crop infections.

Advantages of inter-cropping are:

(i) Leads to efficient usage of land by growing the different crops technically with each other that will increase profit

(ii) Can cause the protection of cash crop

(iii) Prevent soil erosion and upper enriched crust

(iv) Supplement nutrients to the main crop and thereby reduces the application of fertilizers.

Crop rotation is a technique of growing different crops on the same field in a pre-planned succession. Soil loses its fertility if the same crops are grown repeatedly. Hence, it is necessary to do crop rotation. Crop rotation can be either a one, two, or three-year rotation.

Inter-cropping is the growing of two or more crops in a definite row pattern.

Mixed cropping is a method of growing more than one kind of crop in the same field during the same growing season. This will help utilize the maximum amount of land and produce more kinds of crops in a shorter time.

Monocropping will damage soil fertility as cultivating the same type of crop repeatedly in the soil absorbs a particular type of nutrient completely from the soil. It creates a nutrient deficiency in the soil.