Use of vermicomposting biotechnology for recycling organic wastes in agriculture

Gunindra Chattopadhyay

doi:10.1186/2251-7715-1-8

Abstract

Recent trend of declining sustainability in agricultural production is appearing as a major threat to most of the Asian countries. To combat the situation, increasing importance is now being paid on incorporation of organic materials for rejuvenating the health condition and, hence, the productivity of these soils. Large scale availability of conventional organic manures being a big problem nowadays, major attention is being paid on recycling of different kinds of organic wastes for this purpose. Apart from abatement of environmental pollution, such reuse of organic wastes in agriculture helps in the improvement of various physical, chemical and biological properties of the soils and, thus, helps in sustaining the soil health. While recycling different organic wastes in agriculture, it is essential to process the materials through an adequate period of composting for improving their usability in the soils. However, due to some short comings of traditional composting systems, the technology of recycling of organic wastes has not been widely accepted so far. Under this situation, vermicomposting has recently emerged as a simple but efficient biotechnology for recycling wide ranges of organic wastes with the help of some specific groups of earthworms. In view of the growing popularity of this biotechnology, various aspects of waste recycling in agriculture through vermicomposting have been dealt in this communication.

Highlights

With the constant expansion of the world population, there is an increase in demand for food and raw materials
The study of soil comes from two areas of riparian veg‐ etation being one composed of trees and other soils were collected at a depth of 0-20 cm, the soil samples were analyzed in the laboratory of the Brazilian Agricul‐ tural Research Corporation—Embrapa Forestry and soil laboratory of the Federal University of Parana (UFPR) to determine their chemical composition and organic matter q = a + b cqe
The average amount of organic matter present in soil consisting of woody vegetation was 370.9 g kg−1; as for the land areas composed per gram, the amount of organic matter was observed 99.10 g kg−1

Summary

Introduction

With the constant expansion of the world population, there is an increase in demand for food and raw materials. An estimate of the United Nations (2008) stated that in 2050, the number of people on the planet will be approximately nine billion. This constant expansion of the population has driven the development of new technologies in the agribusiness segment, such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, natural resource management, and new pesticides. Pesticides are substances with toxic action and include herbicides, insecticides, miticides, fungicides, and others (EXTOXNET 1996; Spark and Swift 2002); Illani et al. Corporation—EMBRAPA, Colombo, PR 83411‐000, Brazil. These chemical compounds have active ingredients formulated to prevent, combat, or destroy unwanted species or diseases that might interfere with agricultural production or in the storage and transport of planted crops (McBride 1994; Jakelaitis et al 2006)

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