Composting and microbial inoculation of coconut coir dust-chicken manure mixture for organic fertilizer use

Issue Date

4-2011

Abstract

Coconut coir dust and chicken manure abound as agro-industrial wastes in many parts of the country and their successful processing into effective organic fertilizers could provide added income as well as help in mitigating environmental pollution. This study explored the use of composting and microbial inoculation to convert these materials into value-added inputs for agricultural production. Cultures of Azotobacter sp. and/or Trichoderma sp. were inoculated into coconut coir dust-chicken manure mixture (60/40, w/w) and this was composted for a 28-d period under 3 conditions: flask composting without combined N; flask-composting with 1% ammonium sulfate; and net-bag composting embedded in actual compost heaps. Unsterile mixtures inoculated with Azotobacter alone exhibited the highest weight loss and the highest N gain in compost in flasks. Under actual composting, although Azotobacter alone increased material degradation significantly over all other treatments, the combined inoculation with Azotobacter and Thricoderma promoted high carbon loss, high N gain and depression of C/N ratio. Correlation showed total N increase was due more to nitrogen fixation than to substrate decomposition. Microbial inoculation enhanced the populations of target organisms in the resulting compost. Confirmation of the beneficial effects of inoculated coir dust-chicken manure compost was done in a field test in lowland rice. Significant grain yield increase over the control, as much as 30%, was obtained with this kind of compost.

Source or Periodical Title

Philippine Journal of Crop Science

ISSN

0115-463x

Volume

36

Issue

1

Page

47-56

Document Type

Article

Frequency

tri-quarterly

Physical Description

tables

Language

English

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