In order to assess the impact of increasing plant functional diversity on yield without the added complication of planting density, planting density was kept stable across the plots and thus sometimes planted the monocultures at slightly larger
than optimal planting densities. Monoculture of peanut, pepper and cowpea were planted at less than optimal density. With the exception of number of pods per cowpea plant, these species were the least responsive to mixed cropping with regards to fruit quality and consistently underyielded.