Abstract
Healthy soils are essential for progressive agronomic activities. Organic fertilization positively affects agro-ecosystems by stimulating plant growth, enhancing crop productivity and fruit quality and improving soil fertility. Soil health and food security are the key elements of Organic Agriculture 3.0. Landfilling and/or open-dumping of animal wastes produced from slaughtering cause environmental pollution by releasing toxic substances, leachate and greenhouse gases. Direct application of animal carcasses to agricultural fields can adversely affect soil microbiota. Effective waste management technologies such as thermal drying, composting, vermicomposting and anaerobic digestion transform animal wastes, making them suitable for soil application by supplying soil high in organic carbon and total nitrogen. Recent agronomic practices applied recycled animal wastes as organic fertilizer in crop production. However, plants may not survive at a high fertilization rate due to the presence of labile carbon fraction in animal wastes. Therefore, dose calculation and determination of fertilizer application frequency are crucial for agronomists. Long-term animal waste-derived organic supplementation promotes copiotrophic microbial abundance due to enhanced substrate affinity, provides micronutrients to soils and protects crops from soil-borne pathogens owing to formation of plant-beneficial microbial consortia. Animal waste-derived organically fertilized soils possess higher urease and acid phosphatase activities. Furthermore, waste to fertilizer conversion is a low-energy requiring process that promotes circular bio-economy. Thus, considering the promotion of soil fertility, microbial abundance, disease protection and economic considerations application of animal-waste-derived organic fertilizer should be the mainstay for sustainable agriculture.
Highlights
Due to increase in the world’s population and changes in their dietary habits, the global demand for food is expected to be doubled within the few decades [1]
Anaerobic digestion is a series of biological process that facilitates organic matter breakdown in the absence of oxygen to produce biogas that may be an alternative source of energy to replace fossil fuels
Biochar is a carbon-rich charcoal-like organic substance obtained from pyrolysis of biomass waste, which is usually applied as soil conditioner/amender in order to improve agro-ecosystem health and crop productivity and can reduce the adverse effects of phytopathogens [83]
Summary
Due to increase in the world’s population and changes in their dietary habits, the global demand for food is expected to be doubled within the few decades [1]. Organic agriculture is going to be an effective alternative worldwide Such practices encourage quality food production excluding the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and targets equilibrium in soil dynamics. The emerging problems in developing countries like India appear clear: (a) Production of safe, healthy and affordable food for the constantly growing population, (b) recycling and reuse of organic waste in agriculture as fertilizer, (c) reduction in GHG emissions and environmental pollution, (d) protecting soil health and landscape diversity from synthetic applications and (e) development of a bio-based economy to achieve overall sustainability. Nunes et al [44] grew soybean and corn with composted abattoir waste, while Arancon et al [45] assessed positive effects of animal manure vermicompost Feasibility of these organic fertilizers varied considerably with the feedstock type and adopted treatment technology [46]. Bhunia et al [31] suggested additional thermal treatments to make the compost pathogen-free
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