Abstract
Temperate agricultural practices that lower external inputs, increase potential for carbon (C) storage, and augment system resilience, particularly through agrodiversity, remain crucial to productive landscapes. Agroforestry systems, the combination of trees and crops, achieve such shifts in agricultural management, predominantly when positive interspecific interactions are optimized. Although early growth competition between tree-crop systems has been well documented, little work has developed effective techniques to minimize residual antagonism with agroforestry systems. To mitigate such competition, we used a model tree-crop system to test the effectiveness of nutrient spiking the tree component [Pinus strobus L. (white pine)] on reducing belowground competition with the crop component [Zea mays L. (corn)]. Nutrient spiking is widely used in monoculture plantation systems, but no work has redirected this technique to multispecies agroforestry systems. We hypothesized that the internal accumulation and retention of nutrients associated with nutrient spiked pine seedlings will lower stress on native soil resources after out-planting, permitting increased nutrient availability for crop growth. Two levels of nutrient spiking [untreated (S0) and spiked (S1)] of white pine were intercropped with corn, as well as monoculture controls for each species, under greenhouse conditions. After 2 months, root biomass response of corn and pine was significantly higher (19% and 52% respectively as compared to monoculture growth) in the nutrient spiking treatment. Nutritionally, nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) significantly increased in pine tissue with pre-transplant spiking. This presumably reduced stress on native soil nutrients and resulted in the steady or increased N, P, and K uptake in corn shoot tissue (increases of 19%, 0%, 49% respectively) intercropped with spiked pine in comparison to corn in monoculture. Our findings contribute a preliminary examination of pretransplant nutrient spiking practices to reduce resource stress and mitigate nutritional competition during early crop growth in an agroforestry context. Such specialized practices may be useful in order to promote integration of trees in cropped landscapes for the eventual benefits of nutrient and hydrological regulation as well as increased productivity and C storage capacity.
Highlights
Temperate agricultural practices that lower external inputs, increase potential for carbon storage, and augment system resilience through diversification remain crucial to landscape sustainability
Our research goal is to test the utility of nutrient spiking as an agroforestry technology. We addressed this goal with two research questions: 1) does nutrient spiking provide sufficient internal reserves in the tree stratum to minimize in-situ interspecific nutrient competition? And 2) what are the indirect effects of spiking on target crop growth and nutrition? We hypothesized that nutrient spiking the intercropped tree component will reduce below ground competition with the crop component, increasing crop productivity and nutrition during early growth; higher nutrient reserves in the tree component reduce dependency and stress on native belowground nutrient resources
This study examined the potential for nutrient spiking techniques to mitigate interspecific competition at early growth stages of a white pinecorn intercropping system in southern Ontario
Summary
Temperate agricultural practices that lower external inputs, increase potential for carbon storage, and augment system resilience through diversification remain crucial to landscape sustainability. Agroforestry, the integration of trees on the cropped landscape, may prove an essential practice to achieve such shifts in agricultural management when positive interspecific interactions are optimized. To reduce agrarian vulnerability to climate change, the inclusion of trees within agricultural production systems can mitigate risk through hydrological regulation and reduced severity of harsh weather events. This requires an accurate understanding of species interactions for optimal. 1874-3315/10 productivity and the quantification of biophysical effects of trees in agricultural landscape, and the development of new techniques to promote such agroforestry practices, in a temperate regional context. On nutrient deficient sites and during the early growth phase of intercropping, tree roots may out compete growing crops for belowground resources [6, 7], as root size asymmetry may not yet be present in an agroforestry system
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