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

Urban horticulture, substrate culture, vermicomposting, vermicompost, nutrient solution, molokhia, spinach, food security, food safety.

How to produce the most nourish leafy vegetables such molokhia and spinach environmentally and safety under mega city condition like Cairo to cover food security and safety, to maximize the land and water use beside recycle the organic urban wastes? The use of simple substrate culture integrated with vermicomposting technique offered a gate to achieve the study's targets. The experiment was carried out during successive two summer seasons for molokhia and two winter seasons for spinach of 2013 and 2014 in roof culture system under urban conditions in Central Laboratory for Agriculture Climate (CLAC), Agriculture Research Center, Egypt. The study aimed to investigate the use of vermicompost as substrate amendment of peat moss + perlite in different rates (0, 10, 20 and 30 %) combined with two sources of nutrient solution (chemical and vermi-liquid) at 1.5 dS m-1 level which performed in complete randomized blocks design. The vegetative characteristics and chemical content (N, P, K (%), Pb and Cd (mg/Kg) of molokhia and spinach were measured. The obtained results indicate that using vermi-liquid as a nutrient solution gave the highest yield of molokhia and spinach compared to chemical nutrient solution. On the other hand, increasing the rate of vermicompost from 0 to 10 % led to increase the yield of molokhia (10.0 to 14.1 and 9.4 to 16.3 Kg/season/m2) and spinach (6.2 to 9.2 and 6.2 to 9.7 Kg/season/m2) during the both seasons respectively while increase the rate up to 30 % led to decrease the yield and increase N, P, K (%) contents of molokhia and spinach. The highest N, P, K (%) contents of molokhia and spinach were recorded by vermicompost rate 30 % combined with vermi-liquid. The revealed results of Pb (mg/Kg) provided that increasing the rate of vermicompost had appositive effect on decreasing Pb content of molokhia and spinach. Also the use of vermi-liquid as a nutrient solution had the lowest contents of Pb in both of molokhia and spinach. The results of Cd (mg/Kg) were zeros in the different treatments. The integrated environmental management via simple substrate culture and vermicomposting in cultivating molokhia and spinach could achieved the food security and safety.