Microorganisms in the Conversion of Agricultural Wastes to Compost

Abstract

Microorganisms play an important role in the recycling of agricultural wastes. The compost generated by bioconversion of agroresidues offers several benefits such as enhanced soil fertility and soil health which can lead to increased agricultural productivity, improved soil biodiversity, reduced ecological risks and a healthier environment. These virtues make composting an ideal option for processing of the enormous quantities of agrowastes that are generated in the world. Recent reports also indicate multifarious uses of bioaugmented compost as carrier for bioinoculants, biocontrol agents for diseases suppressivness and bioremediation. There is definite need to intensify research on novel effective microorganisms to prepare high quality compost in a relatively shorter duration and new technologies for large-scale production.

Bioconversion of Egypt's Agricultural Wastes into Biogas and Compost

“…It is the biological decomposition of organic materials by microorganisms under controlled aerobic conditions to a relatively stable humus-like material called compost, and the process is usually run as a batch process [48][49]. It is suitable for AWs such as livestock manures, bedding, and various residual plant materials (straw, culls, or on-farm processing wastes).…”

“…It has to take place in a well-managed process to obtain a valuable product with minimum negative environmental impacts. The composting process reduces AW volume, moisture content, viable weed seeds, insect larvae (flies problems), and odor; it also reduces/eliminates pathogens due to the high process temperature (thermophilic) and it produces a humus-like compost (40-50% of the starting substrate) with fine, moderate, or coarse texture and rich in nutrients to be used as a biofertilizer [48,50], which subsequently can be used in organic agriculture to produce a top-quality food by enhancing the environment and maintaining soil fertility [51], which leads to increasing crops yield [49]. The duration of the composting process reaches 90 days, but it can also last for 75 days [52].…”

Potential of Perionyx excavatus (Perrier) in lignocellulosic solid waste management and quality vermifertilizer production for soil health

“…So requires long time for natural decomposition (Isaac and Nair 2005). Hubbe et al (2010) and Singh and Nain (2014) stated that many studies on the decomposition of leaf litter with lack of information on the lignin, cellulose, hemicellulose, phenol and humic acid. No study is available regarding the levels of this content in the CLL after vermicomposting process.…”

Preliminary study on rice straw degradation using microbial inoculant under shake flask condition

“…Different microorganisms may have different roles in the decomposition process. As an example, several fungi take place in degrading lignocelluloses meanwhile some bacteria act as cellulose degrading microorganisms (Singh and Nain, 2014). The celluloses and hemicelluloses contained in rice straw could be hydrolyzed by certain microorganisms using solid state as well as submerged fermentation to produce value added products (Thomas et al, 2016).…”