Author's Name:	Abul-Soud M. A.
Subject Area:	Life Sciences
Subject	Agricultural
Section	Research Paper

Rooftop garden, urban agriculture, food security, substrate culture, vermicompost, lettuce, celery, salad and red cabbage.

Under climate change impacts and limited natural resources, urbanization and population increment presented challenges related to food security and GHG`s mitigation that generate many global interests towards urban agriculture and recycling organic urban wastes. The current study carried out during autumn and winter seasons of 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 at the Central Laboratory for Agricultural Climate, Agricultural Research Center, Dokki, Egypt. The study investigated the ability of using substrate culture system (peat moss: perlite (50:50) and sand: vermicompost (80:20) as rooftop garden on improve food security of some leafy vegetables (lettuce, celery, salad and red cabbage) in substrate culture) under different pots volumes 6 and 8 liters. Physical and chemical properties of substrates, vegetative growth, yield and N, P and K characteristics of lettuce, celery, salad and red cabbage were determined. The obtained results of both two factors indicated that the use of sand + vermicompost and pot volume 8 liters recorded the higher vegetative, yield characteristics and N, P and K contents results of lettuce, celery, salad and red cabbage compared to peat + perlite and pot volume 6. Increasing pot volume from 6 to 8 liters of substrate led to increase the vegetative and yield of studied leafy vegetables. The interaction effect shown that the highest yield parameters / plant and N, P and K contents of the studied vegetables presented by sand + vermicompost combined with pot volume 8 liters. In reverse to the horticulture point view, the economic efficiency and food security had a different orientation while the use of pot volume 6 liters produced the higher yield per area unit (2 x 3 m) as a result of increase the plant density from 48 plants/ area unit/ pot volume 8 liters to 72 plants/ area unit/ pot volume 6. The study take in high concern maximizing area use efficiency to cover the food security and economic scales while canceled the impact of plant density factor of both pot volume treatments. The study recommended to implement sand + vermicompost combined with pot volume 6 liters. The study offer applicable guide for enhancing the food security of leafy vegetables in urban and remote areas.