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Production Possibility Frontiers and Estimation of Competition Effects: The Use of A Priori Information on Biological Processes in Intercropping

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2008

Radha Ranganathan
Radha Ranganathan
Affiliation:
Department of Theoretical Production Ecology, Wageningen Agricultural University, Wageningen, The Netherlands
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Summary

Production possibility frontiers contribute much to an economic evaluation of yield advantages from intercropping. The difficulty with estimating a production frontier empirically from experimental data is one of ascertaining that the fitted curve corresponds with the frontier. This problem has been overcome by deriving the frontier from a priori knowledge of the biological processes that determine the outcome in intercropping. The hyperbolic relationship between biomass yield and plant density, and the parameters that characterize the degree of intra-and inter-specific competition in intercropping are used in this paper to derive production possibility frontiers. The method is illustrated with data from three intercropping studies. A brief review of the two main methods used by researchers to evaluate the results of intercropping, and their limitations, is also presented.

Type
Research Article
Information
Experimental Agriculture , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , July 1992 , pp. 351 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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