Abstract
Keywords
INTRODUCTION
Predicting the outcome of plant interference of crops with weeds has become an important topic in agricultural systems since increasing attention has been placed on whether endogenous ‘crop protection’ can be developed in a strongly-interfering crop species (Romeo and Weidenhamer, 1999; Caamal-Maldonado et al., 2001). Harper (1961, 1964) proposed the term interference to describe changes in the environment of plants which result from the proximity of neighbours. Competition and allelopathy are the two components of interference. Muller (1969) defined competition as a process in which one plant depletes some essential elements for plant growth to a level that is limiting to the growth of a second plant sharing that habitat. Molisch (1937) defined allelopathy as any biochemical interaction among plants of all levels of complexity, including micro-organisms. Naturally, competition is physical interference, while allelopathy is chemical interference (Harper, 1977). The response to competition is usually reduction in plant growth, while the response to allelopathy is characteristically stimulation at low concentration and inhibition as the concentration of allelochemical increases (Rice, 1984; Liu and Lovett, 1989).
Interference can undoubtedly occur in field by proximity to other plants. The growth and development of plants may be influenced by both chemical and physical interference (Harper, 1977; Rice, 1984). In some cases, competition may be the predominant contributor to such interference, and in other cases, allelopathy (Bais et al., 2003) may be the major contributor. A classic example is that the sparseness of vegetation under black walnut (
However, separation of allelopathy from other aspects of plant interference remains one of the most challenging tasks in the studies of plant interference (Harper, 1977). It would be an advantage to distinguish the relative magnitudes of the separate contributions to total interference so that the strategy of applying crop allelopathy to weed control can be evaluated. To facilitate the separation of allelopathy from resource competition, Liu and Lovett (1993) reported a number of techniques for measuring allelopathy without competition. They are siphoning bioassay apparatus, hydroponic system, and stair-step apparatus. All these techniques are designed to test the living plant without resource competition. The effects of the leachates from living barley growing in these techniques were confirmed as due to allelopathy, and two allelochemicals, gramine and hordenine, were identified in the leachates of the living barley roots (Liu and Lovett, 1993). In our previous reports (An et al., 1996, Liu et al., 2003), modelling methodologies were developed to assist with the study of allelopathy. In this paper, a simple model is proposed to quantify the relative contribution of allelopathy to interference against white mustard by barley. In order to determine the magnitude of allelopathy in terms of its contribution to inference, the approach used is an addition of allelopathic effects to the test plants without introduction of any artificial barrier to plant growth. The interference by barley was assessed and the relative contributions of allelopathy and competition to overall interference were modelled.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
A. Modelling Approach to Separating Allelopathy Contribution from Interference
In a two species mixture, the yield of i-species can be generally expressed as
where
Combining Eqs (1) and (2) gives
Let
As interference is a plant density related phenomenon, if the general ability to interfere by one species is to be assessed, the density effect should be considered and adjustment made on an equivalent density basis, whereupon the magnitude of interference can be effectively compared between species. It is proposed that the yield of i-species at a density of
where

The illustration of yields adjusted (wij) on an equivalent density basis at various plant densities in mixture. The plant yield of i-species in the absence of j-species, (Wio) is set to 1.0, while that in the presence of j-species, (Wij) varies up to 1.0.
Liu (1991) obtained an equation for calculation of total interference (RmI) by barley on white mustard as
where
B. Experiments
Examples of applying the approach were illustrated by using the experiments conducted in April 1989 in glasshouse at University of New England, Armidale (Lat. 30°31′S, Long. 150°40′E). A mixture of soil and sand in a 1:1 ratio was used to fill draining-free plastic pots (15cm in diameter). Each pot received 100–150 ml of complete Hoagland's solution (Hoagland and Arnon, 1950) each week and was supplemented by quantities of water every day. As plants were growing up, the distances between pots were increased up to 60 cm for elimination of shading between pots.
Split-plot designs were used with four replications. The main-plot factors were three densities, namely 1 plant, 12 plants, 24 plants pot−1. The sub-plot factors were treatments with barley leachates (see ‘C. Leachates’) and without leachates. The resultant treatments were i) main-plot factor 1: one white mustard in monoculture (1M) and one white mustard in monoculture plus leachates (1M+L); ii) main-plot factor 2: twelve white mustard in monoculture (12M) and 12 white mustard in monoculture plus leachates (12M+L); and iii) main-plot factor 3: twenty four white mustard in monoculture (24M) and 24 white mustard in monoculture plus leachates (24M+L).
Split-plot designs were used with four replications. The main-plot factors were three mixtures and the sub-plot factors were that without interference, with interference, and with interference plus allelopathic effects. The treatments were i) main-plot factor 1: six white mustard in monoculture (6M), 6 white mustard with 18 barley in mixture (6M+18B) and 6 white mustard with 18 barley in mixture plus leachates (6M+18B+L); ii) main-plot factor 2: twelve white mustard in monoculture (12M), 12 white mustard with 12 barley in mixture (12M+12B) and 12 white mustard with 12 barley in mixture plus leachates (12M+12B+L); iii) main-plot factor 3: eighteen white mustard in monoculture (18M), 18 white mustard with 6 barley in mixture (18M+6B) and 18 white mustard with 6 barley in mixture plus leachates (18M+6B+L).
White mustard in both Experiment I and Experiment II were harvested 5 weeks after sowing. The harvested material was separated into leaf, stem and root components. Leaf area was determined using an electronic planimeter (Paton, Stepney, Australia). Dry weight of leaf, stem and root were obtained after being placed in an oven at 65°C for 48 hours.
RESULTS
The leachates of barley roots significantly reduced (P < 0.01) the total dry weight per white mustard in the monoculture experiment at each density (Table 1). The allelopathic effects of barley on white mustard, expressed as
Allelopathic Effects of Barley Root Leachates on the Growth of White Mustard
Comparison is only applicable within each column. Different letters denote a significance level of 0.01. RmL is allelopathic effect of barley leachates on white mustard.
Interference by barley significantly depressed the leaf area and dry weight of white mustard (Figures 2 and 3). The leachates significantly exhibited a further reduction of leaf area and dry matter. This further reduction was attributable to allelopathic effects by barley.

Effects of barley with and without additional leachates on leaf area of white mustard.

Effect of barley with and without leachates on total dry weight of white mustard.
The total dry weight of white mustard was separated into the yield components (Table 2). Interference (competition and allelopathy) or interference plus leachates, significantly depressed leaf dry weight, stem dry weight and root dry weight of white mustard (P < 0.05), except in the case of leaf dry weight between the treatments ‘6M+18B’ and ‘6M+18B+L’.
Relative Contributions of Competition and Allelopathy to Interference by Barley on White Mustard
Comparison is only applicable within each column. Different letters denote a significance level of 0.01. The symbols of m, n, W and w are defined in equation (6).
The assessment of interference by barley and the combination of interference with allelopathic effect by barley, and the estimations of the contribution to interference, on an equivalent density basis, are shown in Table 2. The averaged relative interference as assessed by the data obtained from the current experiments was −0.56, which was reasonably similar to the value (−0.61) predicted by the model of equation (7). With the calculations based on equivalent density, allelopathy contributed 40%, 37% and 43% of the interference by barley, while competition by barley contributed to the 60%, 63% and 57% of interference at the densities of 6, 12 and 18 white mustard pot−1, respectively (Table 2).
DISCUSSION
Coble and Ritter (1978) assessed the contribution of competition and allelopathy to the total interference by
Bell and Koeppe (1972) estimated the relative contributions of allelopathy and competition to interference by giant foxtail (
In the current experiment, keeping in mind such limitations as above, the number of barley, age of the plant and conditions of the experiment were taken into account in the design and the modelling. Therefore, the relative magnitude of the two components of interference by barley would reasonably reflect the two contributions.
Since it is impossible to eliminate allelopathic effects when any attempt is made to assess contributions of the two components of interference, the approach of adding an equivalent amount of leachates to the system was the preliminary solution to this problem. In order to improve the assessment, it is important to ensure that such equivalent addition is as close as possible to the actual amounts involved in allelopathy. As an average density of donor plants was selected and the variation of allelopathic effects by interaction between density and frequency was also considered, the addition of leachates and assessment of their contribution would be reasonably valid.
The method of Weidenhamer et al. (1989) was designed to determine allelopathic effects as dependent on the density of target plants. They used the classic log-log plot of the response relationship to demonstrate whether allelopathy was involved in the interference. The magnitude of the contribution from allelopathy was unable to be measured in their method. The herein model reported attempted to quantify the allelopathic effect and may be considered as one step forward in the separation of allelopathy from competition in studies on plant interference. However, the method has a number of limitations. First, the equation (6) is only one of many such ways for adjusting the plant yield and not necessarily the best. In particular, the power m/n may be further modified by a constant which is greater or less than a unit. Second, quantitatively assessing the contributions is valid if there are no autotoxins in either species.
One of the main challenges in research on allelopathy is the separation of allelopathic effect from competition (Jensen et al., 2001) and quantitatively determining the magnitude of the contribution to the interference by each component. Although many attempts (Nilsson, 1994; Mallik and Prescott, 2001) have been made to address the issues, such problems remain unsolved in full. Nevertheless, the mechanisms of interference and the contributions of each component must be fully understood before any strategy of crop protection can be effectively developed.
