Fig. 5: Percentage change in crop production under one optimal intercropping configuration (i.e., full temporal overlap, TND = 0, and optimal relative densities- with cereal relative density always higher than that of the legume) as a function of the proportion of current monoculture land converted to intercropping.
From: Ecological drivers of intercropping performance for enhanced global crop production
Total crop-specific land area remains constant. Dotted lines link crops within the same intercrop association. Bold black numbers indicate production gains (in Mt) compared to the 2013-2023 FAO 10-year average. Example of interpretation: Among a possible combination of optimal RD solutions identified using the Pareto front method (see Materials and Methods section), when the RD of faba bean = 0.29 and that of wheat = 0.74, the simulated pLER values obtained from our model (Eq. 9, Materials and Methods) are 0.73 for wheat and 0.46 for faba bean. If this combination (with these parameter values) were applied globally, it could lead to an increase in wheat production of 5.7 Mt and in faba bean production of 38.8 Mt relative to the 2013–2023 FAO 10-year average.
