Vermicomposting with maize increases agricultural benefits by 304 %

23Citations
Citations of this article
84Readers
Mendeley users who have this article in their library.

This article is free to access.

Abstract

Pollution of agricultural ecosystems is due to the excessive use of mineral fertilizers and mass discharge of livestock manure. Therefore, there is a need for disposing manure safely, for instance by transforming manure into valuable compost. Traditional composting is, however, time-consuming with considerable nutrient losses. Vermicomposting is an alternative method, but so far, there are few quantitative evaluations of vermicomposting. We therefore compared vermicomposting and traditional composting of cattle manure with maize. Our results show that the amount of nutrients from vermicomposting is lower than that from traditional composting. Nonetheless, vermicomposting yielded 2172.0 kg of earthworms per hectare, which provided an additional income of US$4008.1 to farmers. Moreover, vermicomposting increased aboveground biomass by 7.7 % and maize grain yield by 18.3 %. The global output of vermicomposting was thus higher by 304 % due to higher grain yield and earthworm income.

Cite

CITATION STYLE

APA

Guo, L., Wu, G., Li, C., Liu, W., Yu, X., Cheng, D., & Jiang, G. (2015). Vermicomposting with maize increases agricultural benefits by 304 %. Agronomy for Sustainable Development, 35(3), 1149–1155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13593-015-0307-0

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

Already have an account?

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley

Sign up for free