Abstract
In Colombia, vanilla is a highly promising crop. The success of the plant depends, in part, on an appropriate nutrition. The nutritional requirements of the plant, however, are currently unknown. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: what is the most adequate organic substrate composition for vanilla crop? And what is the effect of chemical and biological fertilization on vanilla plant growth and nutrient uptake? Our hypothesis was that vanilla plant nutrient uptake and growth depends on the substrate composition (based on the proportion of either woodchips or coconut fiber and leaf litter), fertilization dose and biofertilization. To this purpose, experimental plots of 0.8×0.8×0.2 m were monthly filled out with 10 L of a substrate that contained either woodchips (M) or coconut fiber (F) and leaf litter (H) in different volumetric proportions (75:25, 50:50, 25:75%). Two types of fertilization were evaluated: chemical (fertilizer grade 27-11-11 at four rates: 0, 20, 60, 140 g per plant per year) and biofertilization (80 cm3 per plant of a microbial inoculum composed for several rhizosphere-microorganisms isolated from healthy vanilla plants). The results indicate that there was a significant (P≤0.01) interaction between substrate composition and fertilization on plant growth. At all dates of observation, the shoot length of vanilla plants was significantly increased with the fertilization dose of 20 g/plant only in the substrates composed by 75% of either coconut fiber or woodchips and 25% of leaf litter. In general, the presence of coconut fiber produced leaf contents of phosphorus, potassium, copper, magnesium, and manganese significantly higher (P≤0.05) than those obtained when the woodchips were included in the substrate. The magnitude of this effect depended on the nutrient considered. On the contrary, the presence of woodchips in the substrate significantly (P≤0.05) increased the leaf nitrogen and calcium contents in respect to those levels observed when the coconut fiber was employed in the growth substrate.
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