Abstract:
The present study investigates the potential of biomass ash (BA) to produce nutrient-rich vermicompost for recycling within cropping systems. Initially, BA is thoroughly incorporated into dairy manure to obtain the final NPK content of 3.5 (T-1), 7.0 (T-2), 10.0% (T-3) and control specifically is not exposed to BA (T-0). The total readily available plant nutrient results indicated that vermicomposting significantly improved bioavailability of the investigated nutrients at the ranges of 0.5-95.6% (T-1), 0.5-63.2% (T-2), and 0.3-76.5% (T-3), depending on the amount of BA in vermicompost. The present study also investigated the effect of BA vermicompost on the growth and yield of dry beans in two different agro-climatic conditions (hot dry summer and temperate regions). The significant increase in plants' height, pod numbers, dry biomass and grain yield are progressively observed with the increasing dose of BA in vermicompost at both agro-climatic conditions. The mean seed yield is higher in the temperate region (2819 kg ha(-1)) than in the hot dry summer climatic region (2616 kg ha(-1)). With this in mind, the increase of 13.80 and 12.99% in biomass and the seed yields are observed in the temperate region, while the biomass and seed yields are increased at 13.04 and 10.28% in the hot dry region due to the BA vermicompost application. The results show that the soil application of nutrient-rich BA vermicompost not only has a beneficial effect on crop production, but also provides viable alternative recycling options to BA in sustainable crop production systems.
