| Plantation-medicine intercropping refers to planting medicinal shrub, herbs or small arbors between the strips (lines) of plantations for the project of land conversion. The paper illustrated plantation- medicine intercropping model as well as the advantages of the model in land conversion project, with special analysis of walnut- honeysuckle intercropping model in terms of its benefit, techniques as well as problems concerned.The result and findings are as follows:i) Plantation-medicine intercropping is an important model for diversified forestry, an effective approach to fast development. The model includes three kinds of varieties: young plantation-medicine intercropping; mature plantation-medicine intercropping and fruit tree-medicine intercropping.ii) Due to the unique climatic conditions, well-awareness of farmers who have been engaged in planting medicine for generations and the sound support from local government, intercropping model has taken a comparative advantages in the land conversion project.iii) With pure plantation as contrast, pit-intercropping and strip-intercropping were analyzed. The result showed that economic benefit per unit of pit-intercropping is higher than that of strip-intercropping which, in turn, higher than the contrast. The ecological index for five year of pit-intercropping increases by 0.5, line-intercropping by o.41 while the contrast only by 0.21. So ecological benefit of pit-intercropping is highest, followed by line-intercropping and then pure plantation. Comparison of biomass as well as ecological indices showed that walnut- honeysuckle intercropping is advantageous to traditional plantation model.iv) Walnut- honeysuckle intercropping model can alleviate the conflict between expansion of population and less cultivatable land and is of great significance to the restructuring medicinal industry, increasing farmers income as well accelerating the rural economical construction. |
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