Biofertilizers enhance land-use efficiency in intercropping across crop mixtures and spatial arrangements

Santiago Pérez-Bernal^1*Jegan Sekar^2*Prabavathy Vaiyapuri Ramalingam²Natarajan Mathimaran³Matadadoddi Nanjundegowda Thimmegowda⁴Joseph Davis Bagyaraj⁵Ansgar Kahmen⁶

• ¹Botany, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
• ²MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Chennai, India
• ³Center for Sustainability and Climate Studies, Department of Ecology and Environmental Sciences, Pondicherry University, Puducherry, India
• ⁴University of Agricultural Sciences Bangalore, Bengaluru, India
• ⁵Center for Natural Biological Resources and Community Development, Bangalore, India
• ⁶Botany, Universitat Basel, Basel, Switzerland

In accordance with the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) guidelines, in order to be included in the author list a contributor must meet all 4 of the following criteria:• Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work;or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND• Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND• Final approval of the version to be published; AND• Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.Any contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship must not be listed as authors, but their contributions should be detailed in the Acknowledgments section. Requests to add authors who do not meet all 4 of the above criteria will not be considered. We ask authors to use the CRediT taxonomy to clearly describe their contributions to papers. Please see CRediT for more details.If you have any questions regarding authorship, contact the Research Integrity team of the relevant journal.Please note that we cannot proceed with the publication of your manuscript until any outstanding authorship issues have been resolved.Completing and signing the form• Complete and submit an Authorship Change form if you: add, remove, or change the order of the authors after your article is accepted.• We only accept forms written in English, signatures can be provided in Arabic and Chinese.• Complete the form with all article and author information, and new statements (on Page 3), if they have changed.• Complete the last page of the form with the final author list that will be used in the published article.• The form must be signed individually, by each author.• The form should be manually signed or contain valid e-signatures (an electronic version of a signature that can be uniquely identified and linked to the signatory, as shown in the example below).• Useful link: helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/signing-pdfs.html.• Authors can submit signatures across different files individually if the main information is completed and all signatures are provided.• Digital stylus.• Adobe "drawn" (using the default fonts) and "signed" signatures.• Signature stamps or seals.• Handwritten signatures.• Typed signatures which are not e-signatures will not be accepted.• Signatures which have been signed on behalf of other authors/not individually signed. • Photographs of signatures will also not be allowed.If you provide the form with invalid signatures, we will not be able to accept it or be able to consider your request for an authorship change. • 如果您在文章接收后， 需要： 添加、 删除或更改作者的顺序， 请填写并提交作者身份变 更表.• 请您用英文填写表格， 签名可以是中文.• 请将所有文章和作者的信息填写在表格中； 如果添加或者删除作者， 请在第3页填写新 的声明.• 在表格的最后一页填写最终作者名单， 该名单将用于在线发表版本中.• 表格必须由每位作者单独签名.• 表格必须提供手写签名或包含有效的电子签名 (可以唯一识别并链接到签名人的电子 版签名， 如下例所示) .• 有效的链接： helpx.adobe.com/acrobat/using/signing-pdfs.html.• 如果作者因地域原因不能同时在同一个文件签名， 可分别在不同文件填写完整信息， 并单独完成签名.• 数字化签名.• Adobe (使用默认字体) "绘制 (drawn) " 和 "签署 (signed) " 的签名.• 印章签名.• 手写签名.• 不接受非电子签名的打字签名. • Why the change is being made.• Why the author in question was/was not included in the original author list.• Whether additional work was carried out in response to comments from reviewers and/or editors. If so, please provide details of this work in the 'Individual contributions' section.If the reason provided is insufficiently detailed or does not address the above points, the Research Integrity team may contact you for additional information. We will be unable to change the author list for your manuscript without sufficient reason being provided.请为每位需被添加/删除的作者填写单独的申请表格。 如果您希望添加/移除5位以上的作者， 请您联系相关期刊的研究诚信团队. 请确保在 "变更原因" 一栏中提供尽可能详细的信息， 以 便验证作者变更的必要性. 请注意包含以下详细信息：• 为什么要进行更改.• 为什么更改的作者在/不在原始作者名单中.• 对于来自审稿人及编辑的评论是否进行了额外的工作。 如果 "是" ， 请在 "个人贡献" 部分提 供该项工作的详细信息.如果提供的原因不够详细或未解决上述问题， 研究诚信团队可能会与您进一步联系已获取更 多信息。 若无法提供全面且详细的信息， 我们将无法进行该稿件作者名单的更改.