Abstract
Vermicomposting is being promoted as climate-smart agriculture (CSA) technology for developing organic nutrient sources that can be adopted by smallholder farmers. The amendment of soils with cost-effective and available inorganic fertilizers like rock phosphate (RP) and phosphorus-solubilizing microorganisms should also be promoted. Our study investigated the seedling and maturity growth of Swiss chard. The crop maturity study investigated the effect of amending an Oxisol soil with three phosphorus (P) sources applied at three different rates (0, 25, and 50 mg P kg−1 soil), cow and pig manures, and P-solubilizing bacteria resulting in the following treatments: control (soil), soil + RP alone, soil + RP-enriched cow manure vermicompost (VC) with phosphorus-solubilizing bacteria (PSB), and soil + RP-enriched pig manure vermicompost (VP) with PSB. The study investigated the growth performance and accumulation of copper (Cu), zinc (Zn), chromium (Cr), and lead (Pb) in the edible parts of Swiss chard (Beta vulgaris subsp. valgaris var. Cicla). The seedlings were grown using pine bark compost and the three P sources (VC, VP, and RP) at five different application rates (0, 25, 50, 75, and 100%). The results revealed that the use of 50 mg P kg−1 as VP gave the highest fresh weight of 39.78 g, leaf area of 240.41 cm2, and a total P in tissues of 326.91 mg kg−1 at 8 weeks after transplanting. The 50 mg P kg−1 application as VC resulted in a higher Zn content of 8.50 mg kg−1, which was above the permissible level. These results suggest that the best treatment mixture for establishing fully matured Swiss chard was the 50 mg P kg−1 as VP. Therefore, pig manure vermicompost that has been inoculated with phosphorus-solubilizing microorganisms is a promising CSA technology that can improve organic vegetable production by smallholder farmers.
Highlights
The negative effect of global climate change in the agricultural sector will mostly affect Sub-Saharan Africa (Antwi-Agyei et al, 2014; Müller et al, 2014)
The Swiss chard seeds were first planted in three different organic mixtures to maintain uniform, healthy, and vigorous seedlings ready to transplant into the mixture of organic amendments and Oxisol soil for the crop maturity stage of the study
The growth media used for the seedling study consisted of commercial pine bark compost that was collected from Rance Timbers, Stutterheim, Eastern Cape, South Africa
Summary
The negative effect of global climate change in the agricultural sector will mostly affect Sub-Saharan Africa (Antwi-Agyei et al, 2014; Müller et al, 2014). In South Africa, about 5 million ha of soils are severely acidified, with an additional 11 million ha of moderately acidified soil (Venter et al, 2001). Most of these soils are deficient in P and need supplementation with phosphate fertilizers for optimum plant growth (Zaharah et al, 2014; Ch’ng et al, 2019). The soil application of synthetic phosphate fertilizers at a rate of as low as 20 kg P ha−1 resulted in the accumulation of elements such as Cr and Hg (Kongshaug et al, 1992; Kpomblekou and Tabatabai, 1994)
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