Limited effect of thermal pruning on wild blueberry crop and its root-associated microbiota.

Thermal pruning was a common pruning method in the past but has progressively been replaced by mechanical pruning for economic reasons. Both practices are known to enhance and maintain high yields; however, thermal pruning was documented to have an additional sanitation effect by reducing weeds and fungal diseases outbreaks. Nevertheless, there is no clear consensus on the optimal fire intensity required to observe these outcomes.

Conditioning Machine Learning Models to Adjust Lowbush Blueberry Crop Management to the Local Agroecosystem.

Agroecosystem conditions limit the productivity of lowbush blueberry. Our objectives were to investigate the effects on berry yield of agroecosystem and crop management variables, then to develop a recommendation system to adjust nutrient and soil management of lowbush blueberry to given local meteorological conditions. We collected 1504 observations from N-P-K fertilizer trials conducted in Quebec, Canada.

How plant allometry influences bud phenology and fruit yield in two Vaccinium species.

Background And Aims: Understanding how plant allometry, plant architecture and phenology contribute to fruit production can identify those plant traits that maximize fruit yield. In this study, we compared these variables and fruit yield for two shrub species, Vaccinium angustifolium and Vaccinium myrtilloides, to test the hypothesis that phenology is linked to the plants' allometric traits, which are predictors of fruit production.

Methods: We measured leaf and flower phenology and the above-ground biomass of both Vaccinium species in a commercial wild lowbush blueberry field (Quebec, Canada) over a 2-year crop cycle; 1 year of pruning followed by 1 year of harvest.

Lowbush blueberry fruit yield and growth response to inorganic and organic N-fertilization when competing with two common weed species.

Inorganic N fertilizers are commonly used in commercial blueberry fields; however, this form of N can favor increased weed species' growth, which can ultimately reduce the benefits of fertilization. We hypothesized that chipped ramial wood (CRW) compost is an effective alternative organic fertilizer for blueberry plants when weeds are present, as ericaceous shrub species are generally more efficient in utilizing organic N than herbaceous weed species. In this study, we measured the growth, fruit yield, and foliar N response of lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium Aiton) to an application of 45 kg N ha-1 in the form of organic (CRW) or inorganic N (ammonium sulfate) in two areas of a commercial field colonized by either poverty oat grass (Danthonia spicata (L.

Nine years of in situ soil warming and topography impact the temperature sensitivity and basal respiration rate of the forest floor in a Canadian boreal forest.

The forest floor of boreal forest stores large amounts of organic C that may react to a warming climate and increased N deposition. It is therefore crucial to assess the impact of these factors on the temperature sensitivity of this C pool to help predict future soil CO2 emissions from boreal forest soils to the atmosphere. In this study, soil warming (+2-4°C) and canopy N addition (CNA; +0.

Contrasting impacts of two weed species on lowbush blueberry fertilizer nitrogen uptake in a commercial field.

Numerous studies have speculated that lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium) is less efficient than weed species at taking up inorganic nitrogen (N) derived from fertilizers, thus raising questions as to the effectiveness of N fertilization in commercial fields. However, competition for acquiring N as well as specific interactions between blueberry and companion weeds characterized by contrasted functional traits remain poorly documented. Here, we assessed fertilizer-derived N acquisition efficiency and biomass production in lowbush blueberry and two common weed species that have different functional traits-sweet fern (Comptonia peregrina), a N2-fixing shrub, and poverty oat grass (Danthonia spicata), a perennial grass-in a commercial blueberry field in Québec, Canada.

The importance of characterizing residual household waste at the local level: A case study of Saguenay, Quebec (Canada).

Knowledge of the quantity and the type of residual household waste (RHW) generated by a population within a given territory is essential for developing affordable, effective, and sustainable management strategies for waste. This study aims to accurately describe the composition of residential residual materials collected directly from households over the course of a year. Household waste was collected from urban and rural sectors that were representative of the study territory.

Soil organic matter quality influences mineralization and GHG emissions in cryosols: a field-based study of sub- to high Arctic.

Arctic soils store large amounts of labile soil organic matter (SOM) and several studies have suggested that SOM characteristics may explain variations in SOM cycling rates across Arctic landscapes and Arctic ecosystems. The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of routinely measured soil properties and SOM characteristics on soil gross N mineralization and soil GHG emissions at the landscape scale. This study was carried out in three Canadian Arctic ecosystems: Sub-Arctic (Churchill, MB), Low-Arctic (Daring Lake, NWT), and High-Arctic (Truelove Lowlands, NU).