Instrumental analysis of vermicompost with the help of modern technologies provides essential information on its maturity, before it can be used for agricultural application. Nowadays, vermicompost is considered as a promising organic alternative to chemical fertilizers in agriculture and horticulture. The objectives of this review are to summarize the sophisticated instrumental techniques such...

AIMS The objectives of this study were to determine the changes of microbial properties of pig manure collected from pens with different management strategies and composted using different turning and moisture regimes; relate their association with humification parameters and compost temperature; and identify the most suitable microbial indicators of compost maturity. METHODS AND RESULTS Six ...

Humification of plant litter containing carbon and other nutrients greatly contributes to the buildup of soil organic matter, but this process can be altered by forest gap-induced environmental variations during the winter and growing seasons. We conducted a field litterbag experiment in an alpine forest on the eastern Tibetan Plateau from November 2012 to October 2014. Six dominant types of fo...

Proxies such as plant macrofossils, humification indices and testate amoebae have been developed to reconstruct past hydrological variability in ombrotrophic peatlands. Reconstructions based on these approaches have resulted in records of decadalto centennial-scale moisture variability in regions of North America and elsewhere. Although the various peatland moisture proxies generally show signi...

Composts prepared using different solid and liquid organic wastes from various sources can be used as growing media when these materials present adequate proprieties for plant development. The stability and maturity are among the main characteristics of composts. The purpose of this study is to recommend specific bands of the IR spectrum recorded on different composts to enable qualitative and ...

The evaluation of compost stability is of the utmost importance for the reliability of composting as a recycling strategy. To date there is no single parameter that can give a sure indication of the stability of composts from different starting materials. This paper investigates different methods of evaluating the dynamics of transformation of materials and the stability level of the end produc...

Rock phosphate (RP) addition in cow-dung waste-paper mixtures at rates above 2% P has been reported to increase the rate of bio-transformation and humification of organic waste mixtures during vermicomposting to produce organic fertilizer for organic farming. However, the optimization of RP for vermicomposting was not established. The objective of this study was to determine the optimal amount ...

this study investigated maturation and stability levels during composting of quercus robur (qr) woodchips mixed with different nitrogen sources (horse manure, hm and lake mud, lm) for potential agronomic utilisation. the woodchips were mixed with hm and lm, respectively, at mixing ratios of 1qr:2hm or 1qr:2lm. the experiment was conducted in a greenhouse over 100 days. during composting, organi...

this study investigated maturation and stability levels during composting of quercus robur (qr) woodchips mixed with different nitrogen sources (horse manure, hm and lake mud, lm) for potential agronomic utilisation. the woodchips were mixed with hm and lm, respectively, at mixing ratios of 1qr:2hm or 1qr:2lm. the experiment was conducted in a greenhouse over 100 days. during composting, organ...