Overview
This project aims to characterise short- and long-term soil constraints to vegetable production on upland acidic soils in the Philippines and develop strategies to address these constraints.
Food security, malnutrition and stunting remain as serious problems in the Philippines (Briones et al. 2017) where average consumption of vegetables is only 26.5 kg/year (not including staple vegetables) (Philippine Statistics Authority 2017) compared with the FAO recommended 146-182 kg/yr. The low consumption reflects the high cost of vegetables which is directly attributable to the low productivity of vegetable farming systems.
Apart from improving human health, diversification into high value vegetable cropping offers poor farmers the opportunity to improve their standard of living. However, soil fertility and crop nutrition are serious constraints that greatly contribute to low vegetable crop productivity.
In the Philippines, vegetable production is predominantly practiced on the highly weathered upland acidic soils (mostly Ultisols) where the combination of a cooler climate (at 800-1,500m ASL) and soil type favor vegetable production. The upland acidic Ultisols represent about 40% (~12 million ha) of the total land area of the Philippines and are the dominant soil type used for agriculture (CountrySTAT Philippines 2019).
