Abstract
Sustainable and climate resilient strategies are indispensable for efficient management of ever depleting soil fertility in sub-tropical dry land areas of Pakistan. For this purpose, integrated addition of organic and inorganic amendment can play a crucial role. The present study aimed to develop and evaluate the influence of three variable composting technologies, (i) Indore method (IM), (ii) Bangalore method (BM), and Effective microorganisms’ method (EM) on the decomposition of feed stocks including sugarcane bagasse, wheat straw, and mustard stalks. The composting was done for a period 120 days and the periodical sampling (in triplicate) was done after 20, 30, 60, 90, and 120 days to evaluate the rate of decomposition and release of nutrients. The results of the study revealed showed a periodical decrease in in organic carbon and C:N ratio while the concentrations of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K), and micronutrients (Zn, Cu, Fe, and Mn) increased consistently with time. We observed that EM composting method compared to other two methods showed a better decomposition of feed stocks and release of nutrients as indicated by the lowest value of C:N ratio of EM-method compared to other two methods at end of 120 days. Similarly, among feed stocks, the mustard stalks generated the compost with the highest N, P, K, Zn, and Fe contents, however, the highest Cu contents were found in wheat straw and Mn contents in sugarcane bagasse. It was concluded that the EM-method is superior method while cotton stalks is the best feedstock to produce high value compost. This study, however, restricted to controlled composting only but did not include the field evaluations. Therefore, the future research should be on field validation and economic feasibility of EM-compost for sustainable crop production under varied agroecological environments.
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