Food waste is a vast issue global, including in Malaysia. Food waste brings negative impacts, including increasing food production costs, impact on human health, and environmental degradation. Malaysian’s animal- and plant-based diet preferences affected the desired food waste decomposition method as most of the methods only allow plant-based material to be utilized as food waste compost. The objectives of this study were to understand Malaysians' awareness of food waste behaviour and the food waste component for the decomposition. Malaysians usually produce more plant-based food waste than animal-based food waste. Most Malaysians have a high awareness of causes and impact of food waste, but they lack action on food waste reduction. Bio-compost is believed to be the most effective method to manage food waste, and most of them were willing to have it at home. However, some of them are unwilling to have a compost pile at home because there is no time to take care of it.
Food waste is a serious global issue, and one way to reduce the impact of food waste is by composting. Sandwich compost is a type of fermented food waste compost created with microbial fermentation; meanwhile, the composting leachate provides nutrients for plants. Studies have shown that seed germination may be enhanced when treated with sandwich compost leachate. Furthermore, few studies have been on sandwich compost leachate used for seed priming. The objective of this study was to determine the effect of varying leachate concentrations of food waste sandwich compost and priming durations on the performance of Chinese chive (Allium tuberosum) seed germination. Chinese chive (Allium tuberosum) was chosen as the test crop. It is widely used as a flavouring herb with high economic potential; however, its seed germination time is long and requires pre-treatment such as crushing and seed priming to speed up the germination process. The study used four replications and a complete randomisation design (CRD). The seeds were exposed to different percentages of sandwich compost leachate (0.0%, 0.2%, 0.4%, 0.6%, 0.8%, and 1.0%) and priming duration (4, 8, and 12 hours). A significant interaction between the bio-nutri-priming concentration and priming duration was demonstrated by measuring the standard error of germination rate () and corrected germination rate index (Scorrected). A longer bio-nutri-priming duration was key for a higher seed vigour index. The bio-nutri- priming concentration and priming duration, however, had no significant interaction. Longer bio-nutri-priming durations were recommended to obtain better germination performance of Chinese chive. The study showed that a twelve-hour bio-nutri-priming duration and a 0.6 % leachate concentration significantly enhanced the Chinese chive seed germination and helped break seed dormancy.
Okra (Abelmoschus esculentus) is a heat tolerant vegetable crop with high economic and nutritional importance in parts of Asia, Africa, and America. The okra biodiversity held in gene bank collections could be mined for traits for breeding more stress tolerant and nutritional cultivars. An okra core collection of 166 accessions comprising A. esculentus, A. moschatus, A. caillei, and A. manihot has been assembled from the World Vegetable Center germplasm collection (840 accessions) based on diversity analysis with 20 microsatellite markers. A selection of A. esculentus accessions of the core collection (75 accessions) and 20 breeder-selected genotypes have been screened for variation of their response to flooding stress under field conditions using a high throughput phenotyping system. Growth increment per day and changes of physiological indices were measured before, during, and after application of 9 days of flooding stress. Several accessions showed only a small reduction in daily growth increment during flooding. Across the germplasm panel, maintained growth was correlated with maintained normalized differential vegetation index and was negatively correlated with plant senescence index. Accessions with maintained growth and health under flooding were selected for future further analysis and use in breeding.
The humic substance consists of humic acid, fulvic acid, and humin. Humic acid is a useful metal complexing agent, a good dispersant, and a redox agent. Humic acid showed an auxin-like activity and thus promoted root growth and development. It positively affected soil’s physical, chemical, and biological properties. Hence, humic acid indirectly improved plant growth by chelating nutrients to the plant. However, humic acid converted carcinogen compounds in chlorinated water. Still, humic acid is a good compound for agricultural purposes. Humic acid can be produced in thermophilic composting, vermicomposting, and Bokashi. The humification process can occur with decomposers such as black soldier fly. Those methods can be made in farmland and even in the housing area. Extraction of humic acid is required from those production methods. However, it is not easy to extract by farmers on a small scale. Full compost and Bokashi or its tea also showed much humic acid alone. Humic acid extraction may be optional but good as crop tonic. Nonetheless, further study should be carried out. Bokashi tea and leachate with decomposer should be further studied to obtain more evidence of their benefits. With the benefit of composting and fermentation, further study on treating is required for food security.
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).
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