Bioenergy Conversion from Aquatic Weed Water Hyacinth into Agronomically Valuable Vermicompost

Abstract

Increasing amount of waste due to urbanization, lifestyle and shift of huge masses from rural to urban largely contributes to the need for waste management. This developed a need of categorizing the waste into municipal waste, industrial waste, agricultural waste, hospital waste, etc., which will make it easy for the proper disposal, reuse and recycling of waste so determined effort should be taken for the management of waste. For this purpose, proper canalization of segregation, distribution, disposal, recycling, reuse of waste without deteriorating the environment is a matter of great concern. To succeed in these all the stakeholders like users creating waste, environmentalist, scientist, municipal stakeholders and doctors should take an initiative and need to participate in the same. For proper management of solid waste, continuous efforts have been made by recycling and reusing the plant weed. Vermicomposting is the biocomposting process of organic waste by earthworms and bacterial action directing the stabilization of organic matter. The final product produced in this process is known as vermicompost and it assists in the enrichment of soil as well as useful for sustainable agriculture. This technology is a boon for recycling of the solid waste generated from various sources including aquatic weeds. The prime objective of the present investigation is to convert waste into wealth. Its application to the agricultural field is also retrieving the waste garbage into gold. The present investigation is mainly focused on vermicompost production from water hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes) collected from local perennial Sambhaji tank from Solapur and its application to a commercial crop groundnut (Arachis hypogaea) for total yield and biomass production. The significant output of the commercial crop groundnut displays the extended use of vermicompost in agriculture, providing an insight and approach for organic farming in future. Our results suggest that the vermibiotechnology is an eco-friendly and economically feasible technology and it is also helpful for converting waste into bioenergy.