Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Fig. 4.1
Vegetation showing morphology of
Eichhornia crassipes
partly or buried in mud, in shallow water with long fibrous roots.
Echhornia crassipes
is native plant of Amazon basin, and a perennial aquatic plant. Its habitat ranges from
tropical desert to subtropical desert to rainforest zones. It is widely introduced in North
America, Australia, Africa, India, New Zealand etc. (Duke
1983
).
Eichhornia crassipes
is a troublesome aquatic weed and habitant of small and large water bodies, irrigation
canals, dams and many other important aquatic or semi-aquatic places.
The biological characteristics that makes this plant as a source of high productiv-
ity, makes its interest in aquatic energy farming thus biomass of plant can be used for
energy source because the presence of cellulose, hemicelluloses, lignin and pectin
substances are accessible for microbial conversion processes. The standing crop has
been estimated to produce 100-200 mt ha
−1
year
−1
and under ideal conditions each
plant can produce 248 offspring in 90 days. While, the aquatic biomass could al-
ways be used for burning, the high water content is the limit as the biomass requires
drying before consumption. On the other hand, the aquatic biomass (plants) because
of their water content provided ideal raw material for anaerobic digestion provided
they are suitably harvested and chopped to the required size. There are universally
accepted that to control or eradicate this obnoxious weed, it has to be converted to
compost using different methods. The chemical analysis of these composts obtained
after microbial bioconversion found similar to that of organic compost or bio-dung
(Basarkar et al.
2013
). Water hyacinth compost or manure was also experimentally
applied to water bodies and the periodic biological changes were noted along with
the algal succession (Naskar et al.
1986
).
4.2.2
Ipomoea aquatica
Similarly
Ipomoea aquatica
(common name—water spinach), is a member of fam-
ily Convolvulaceae, and mainly found in India, South Asia, Malaysia, Taiwan and
