Recently, there is some competition on arable areas between planting cotton and food crops in Xinjiang region. An alternative approach is to intercrop cotton and food crops or vegetable crops on the same field simultaneously. The objective of the study was to find out some proper combination of crops and cotton based on nutrient competitive absorption and accumulation. A field experiment was conducted in Shihezi University (Xinjiang) to investigate the effects of intercropping patterns on temporal patterns of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium uptake and accumulation by interspecific competition and interspecific facilitation between intercropped species. Cropping patterns included peanut-cotton, soybean-cotton, chickpea-cotton, onion-cotton, radish-cotton, line chilli-cotton intercropping and the corresponding sole cropping systems.

Results showed that soybean and radish were dominant species while cotton was a subordinated species during co-growth in the cotton-soybean and cotton-radish systems. That means that cotton NPK nutrient competitive ratios relative to soybean or radish were always less than one. For co-growth of cotton with peanuts, onion and line chilli, cotton was dominant with respect to onion and line chilli.

The N,P and K nutrient competitive ratios of cotton relative to chickpea were less than one at early co-growth stage of two species, and were greater than one at later co-growth stage, which suggested that chickpea was dominant species at early co-growth stage, but became to be subordinated one at later co-growth stage in the intercropping. There were intercropping advantages for cotton-peanut, cotton-onion, cotton-radish and cotton-line chilli intercropping, which are suitable for local agricultural production.