Prospects for the peat using as the basis of the soil-like substrate in mini-ecosystems modelling

Abstract

Global urbanization is causing a constant decline in arable land as cities and associated industrial zones are “attacking” adjacent agricultural areas. One of the promising ways to solve the problem of increasing food production for the constantly growing population of the planet against the background of rapidly decreasing land resources is the development of fundamentally new alternative methods for the production of crop products, including in greenhouses. The fundamental basis for technological optimization of plant cultivation parameters and the output of the productive process of a particular crop to the maximum of its genetic capacities can be the development of artificial mini-ecosystems based on the reproduction of nature-like processes, implying the balance and combination in one volume of the processes of plant production and reduction of organic waste, initiated directly in the zone of the rhizosphere of plants due to the introduction of technological earthworms into the reduction zone. According to the results of model studies presented in this article, peat is an acceptable basis for the substrate of the root block of a mini-ecosystem, and the introduction of earthworms Eisenia fetida Sav. into the reduction zone does not have a negative effect on lettuce plants, provided that it is used as an energy substrate for cattle manure worms in quantities not exceeding 10 - 20% of the total volume of the substrate.