Vermicomposting Tea a Potential Liquid Biofertilizer

Abstract

Organic agriculture has become a rising topic nowadays for control of soil pollution, degradation and to ensure food security. Organic manures and bio fertilizers play a vital role in that process. Vermicomposting tea is a liquid organic bio fertilizer and it is composed of plant nutrient, plant hormone and microorganism (aerobic microorganisms) such as beneficial bacteria and fungi which enrich soil. Aerobic microorganisms present in vermicomposting tea helps in disease suppression and application of vermicomposting tea will promote plant growth. Vermicomposting tea can be defined as the mixture of aerobic microbes present in vermicomposting with aerated water. These characters of vermicomposting tea helps to use it as liquid biofertilizer, or can be used in biochar activation or charging and can be used as a substrate for hydrophonics system. Tea brewers are used to brew vermicomposting tea. Fresh vermicomposting tea contain more aerobic microbes but with the time the quality of tea become lower and need to add some materials like molasses, brown sugar and need frequent aeration as the aerated tea is more stabilized and give good results in crop production. There are several advantages of such as it is a liquid bio fertilizer which can easily apply, enrich soil with beneficial microbiota, great source of macro and micro nutrients, boosts rhizosphere microbial activity. The limitation is that difficulties in maintain quality while storage but it has great potential to be use in organic agriculture with low cost, eco-friendly and in an efficient way.

Nutritional and microbiological effects of vermicompost tea in hydroponic cultivation of maple peas (Pisum sativum var. arvense L.)

“…The ability to recycle a wide variety of organic waste into an effective fertilizer abundant in macro‐ and micronutrients without causing soil pollution or degradation has made vermicompost (VC) an attractive option for sustainable agriculture (Arosha & Sarvananda, 2022 ; Ghaffari et al, 2022 ; Makode, 2015 ; Srivastava et al, 2018 ). The presence of VC in soil, through active interactions between earthworm and microorganisms, has long been shown to not only act as a soil conditioner that provides nutrients to plants, reducing the carbon to nitrogen ratio, but also improve soil texture by increasing soil porosity and water holding capacity, thereby reducing tillage and irrigation (Datta et al, 2016 ; Sharma & Garg, 2018 ; Van Groenigen et al, 2019 ).…”