Abstract
To ease food insecurities in northern Canada, some remote communities started gardening initiatives to gain more access to locally grown foods. Bush beans (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) were assessed for N, P, K, Mg, and Ca concentrations of foliage as indicators of plant nutrition in a calcareous silty loam soil of northern Ontario James Bay lowlands. Crops were grown in sole cropping and intercropping configurations, with comparisons made between an open field and an agroforestry site enclosed with willow (Salix spp.) trees. Foliage chemical analysis of the sites revealed an abundance of Ca, adequacies for Mg and N, and deficiencies in P and K. Intercropping bean and potato did not show significant crop–crop facilitation for nutrients. The agroforestry site showed to be a superior management practice for the James Bay lowland region, specifically for P. The agroforestry site had significantly greater P for bean plant (p = 0.024) and potato foliage (p = 0.002) compared to the open site. It is suspected that the presence of willows improve plant available P to bean and potatoes by tree root—crop root interactions and microclimate enhancements.
Highlights
Food insecurity in northern Canada’s isolated regions has been a recent subject of interest [1,2,3,4]
Our field study, located in the James Bay lowland, subarctic region of Ontario that is situated at 52◦ N on alkaline soils, focused on bush bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) and potatoes (Solanum tuberosum L.) macronutrient uptake on historically cultivated soils
The K:P ratio in bean plants was significantly greater in the open site than in the agroforestry site
Summary
Food insecurity in northern Canada’s isolated regions has been a recent subject of interest [1,2,3,4]. One strategy to improve food security in isolated regions is to cultivate local foods under ambient conditions to reduce dependencies on expensive foods flown into communities [4,5,6]. This food production strategy has challenges in the Canadian subarctic—and other subarctic regions of the world—as the subarctic climate has historically been deemed a limitation for agriculture [4,7,8,9]. Baseline information regarding soil characteristics, agrometerology, and natural vegetation are required to determine management practices that will improve agriculture production under ambient conditions in a given subarctic community [8]. Our study objectives were to: (i) obtain baseline macronutrients: nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), magnesium (Mg), and calcium (Ca) concentrations from tissue samples of bush bean and potato cultivated in subarctic, Ontario; (ii) determine the macronutrient status in these plants for future nutrient management strategies by utilizing critical levels and ternary diagrams for bean and for potato; and (iii) examine whether utilizing subarctic agroforestry (i.e., tree-lined plots) and intercropping management enhanced macronutrient concentrations of bean and potato tissue samples in comparison to growing in an open field and practicing sole cropping
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