Mitigation of phytotoxic effect of compost by application of optimized aqueous extraction protocols
The abuse of chemical fertilizers in recent decades has led the promotion of less harmful alternatives, such as compost or aqueous extracts obtained from it. Therefore, it is essential to develop liquid biofertilizers, which in addition of being stable and useful for fertigation and foliar applica...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2024
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/10835/14974 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162288 |
| Summary: | The abuse of chemical fertilizers in recent decades has led the promotion of less harmful alternatives, such as compost
or aqueous extracts obtained from it. Therefore, it is essential to develop liquid biofertilizers, which in addition of
being stable and useful for fertigation and foliar application in intensive agriculture had a remarkable phytostimulant
extracts. For this purpose, a collection of aqueous extracts was obtained by applying four different Compost Extraction
Protocols (CEP1, CEP2, CEP3, CEP4) in terms of incubation time, temperature and agitation of compost samples from
agri-food waste, olive mill waste, sewage sludge and vegetable waste. Subsequently, a physicochemical characterization
of the obtained set was performed in which pH, electrical conductivity and Total Organic Carbon (TOC) were measured.
In addition, a biological characterization was also carried out by calculating the Germination Index (GI) and
determining the Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD5). Furthermore, functional diversity was studied using the Biolog
EcoPlates technique. The results obtained confirmed the great heterogeneity of the selected raw materials. However,
it was observed that the less aggressive treatments in terms of temperature and incubation time, such as CEP1 (48 h,
room temperature (RT)) or CEP4 (14 days, RT), provided aqueous compost extracts with better phytostimulant characteristics
than the starting composts. It was even possible to find a compost extraction protocol that maximize the beneficial
effects of compost. This was the case of CEP1, which improved the GI and reduced the phytotoxicity in most of
the raw materials analyzed. Therefore, the use of this type of liquid organic amendment could mitigate the phytotoxic
effect of several composts being a good alternative to the use of chemical fertilizers. |
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