| Summary: | Improving Biomass Production in Crops-livestocks Farmers'Villages: Case of Cereals Based Production Systems in Northern Cameroon. In Northern Cameroon, production systems are mainly characterized by sole cropping with reduced quantities of mineral fertilizer. The quantities of biomass produced are then not sufficient to meet the demand. That is why a study was carried out to enhance quantities of biomass produced taking into account maize grains yield and farmers' access to mineral fertilizers. In three villages of Northern Cameroon (Ourolabo III; Laindé Karewa and Israël), 12 producers associated maize with Mucuna pruriens and 12 did with Brachiaria ruziziensis. Modalities were: T1 (association with recommended dose of fertilizer: 83N 24P 14K / ha), T2 (association with reduced dose of fertilizer: 60N 24P 14K / ha), T3 (maize sole cropping with recommended dose of fertilizer) and T4 (maize sole cropping with reduced dose of fertilizer). Variance analysis was done with the SAS program and Student- Newman-Keuls test permitted to separate the means. Maize association with M. pruriens didn't show any significant difference (P> 0.05) for maize grains yield. Highly significant differences (P< 0.0001) were observed for biomasses production, but not (P> 0.05) between T2 and T1, nor between T4 and T3. Maize association with B. ruziziensis showed significant differences (P< 0.05) between treatments for maize grains yield. Differences were highly significant (P< 0.0001) between treatments for biomass production and crop association yielded higher (P< 0.0001) than sole cropping. When maize was associated with a leguminous crop (M. pruriens), its grains yield did not drop despite the dose of fertilizer used. On the contrary, with a gramineous crop (B. ruziziensis), the yield drop with a reduced dose of fertilizer. In sole cropping, the dose of fertilizer did not affect maize grains yield nor biomass production.
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