Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
mental contamination (Mitchell and Edwards 1997). Vermicompost ad-
dition increases the macropore space ranging from 50-500 μm, resulting
in improved air-water relationship in the soil, favourably affecting plant
growth (Marinari et al. 2000). Evaluation of various organic and inorganic
amendments on growth of raspberry proves that vermicompost has ben-
efi cial buffering capability and ameliorate the damage caused by excess
of nutrients which may otherwise cause phytotoxicity (Subler et al. 1998).
Thus, vermicompost acts a soil conditioner (Albanell et al. 1988) and a
slow-release fertilizer (Atiyeh et al. 2000a). During vermicomposting the
heavy metals forms complex, aggregates with humic acids and other po-
lymerized organic fractions resulting in lower availability of heavy metals
to the plant, which are otherwise phytotoxic (Dominguez and Edwards
2004). Soil amended with vermicompost produced better quality fruits and
vegetables with less content of heavy metals or nitrate, than soil fertilized
with mineral fertilizers (Kolodziej and Kostecka 1994).
9.6 ROLE OF VERMICOMPOST BACTERIA IN BIOMEDICAL
WASTE MANAGEMENT
The importance of sewage sludge, biosolids and biomedical waste man-
agement by safe, cheap and easy methods need no further emphasis. All
these wastes are infectious and have to be disinfected before being dis-
posed into the environment. Biosolids also contain an array of pathogen-
ic microorganisms (Hassen et al. 2001). Biocomposting of wastes bring
about biological transformation and stabilization of organic matter and ef-
fectively reduces potential risks of pathogens (Burge et al. 1987; Gliotti et
al. 1997; Masciandaro et al. 2000). Vermicomposting does not involves a
thermophilic phase which might increase the risk of using this technology
for management of infectious wastes, but surprisingly vermicomposting
resulted into a noticeable reduction in the pathogen indicators such as fe-
cal coliform, Salmonella sp., enteric virus and helminth ova in the bio-
solids (Eastman 1999; Sidhu et al. 2001). Vermicomposting of biosolids
resulted in reduction of faecal coliforms and
Salmonella
sp. from 39,000
MPN/g to 0 MPN/g and < 3 MPN to < 1MPN/g respectively (Dominguez
and Edwards 2004). Vermicomposting of municipal sewage sludge with
