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Monitoring of farmers participating in N2Africa adaptation trials on climbing beans in Kapchorwa, Kabale, Kisoro and Kanungu districts, Uganda, in 2014 and 2015 showed that a majority of farmers in Kapchorwa and Kanungu districts planted climbing beans in intercropping (Ronner et al., 2018). Climbing beans were mainly intercropped with banana, or coffee and banana in these districts. These results warrant more attention for climbing bean/banana intercropping. Especially given that farmers in all districts mention a lack of land as primary reason for intercropping indicates that this practice is not likely to change soon. In addition, as only few examples on climbing bean intercropping with perennials are available in literature, this also makes the topic worthy of investigation. Ntamwira (2014) focused on the pruning of banana leaves to increase light availability for legume intercrops, including climbing bean, in DR Congo. This practice was considered worth exploring in Uganda as well.

An experiment on climbing bean x banana intercropping was conducted in the first and second rainy season of 2016 (seasons 2016A and B respectively). The study included two varieties of climbing beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) that were grown in plots with East African highland bananas (Musa spp.). The research question of this experiment was: