ABSTRACT
Composting Processes ..................................................................................... 121 8.3.4 Nutrients in MW and FW and their VC and Compost .......................... 124 8.3.5 Temporal Variation in Nutrients ............................................................ 124 8.4 Conclusion ....................................................................................................... 135 Keywords ................................................................................................................. 135 Acknowledgment ..................................................................................................... 136 References ................................................................................................................ 136
8.1 INTRODUCTION
The urban green waste generally comprises of garden or park waste such as grass or flower cuttings and hedge trimmings, domestic and commercial food waste, and vegetable market waste, the latter is generated in large quantities and accumulated in unhygienic way adjacent to vegetable markets emanating unbearable malodor due to lack of proper scientific disposal management particularly in developing countries like India. The vegetable market waste (MW) is the leftover and discarded rotten vegetables, fruits, and flowers in the market. This urban waste can be converted to a potential plant
nutrient enriched resource-compost and vermicompost (VC) that can be utilized for sustainable land restoration practices [1]. Vermicomposting is a mesophilic process and is the process of ingestion, digestion, and absorption of organic waste carried out by earthworms followed by excretion of castings through the worm’s metabolic system, during which their biological activities enhance the levels of plant nutrients of organic waste [2]. Compost and VC are the end products of aerobic composting process, the later with using earthworms. The VC possessed higher and more soluble level of major nutrients-nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, calcium, and magnesium [3-5]—compared to the substrate or underlying soil, and normal compost. During the process, the nutrients locked up in the organic waste are changed to simple and more readily available and absorbable forms such as nitrate or ammonium nitrogen, exchangeable phosphorus and soluble potassium, calcium, magnesium in worm’s gut [6, 7]. The VC is often considered a supplement to fertilizers and it releases the major and minor nutrients slowly with significant reduction in C/N ratio, synchronizing with the requirement of plants [8].
