ABSTRACT
Fertilizers are an indispensable part of agriculture. Currently, numerous researches have been done on feather degradation methodologies, including hydrolysis by high-pressure cooking, extruding method, acid, and base hydrolysis, enzymatic hydrolysis, and microbial fermentation — turning agricultural waste into useful fertilizers. Feather degradation solution obtained from microbial fermentation using chicken feathers contains rich amino acids related to a context that could greatly benefit vegetable cultivation by improving their yield and quality. The effectiveness of feather solution in soilless cultivation for lettuces will be investigated. Two groups of 6 lettuces are cultivated in nutrition solution for 35 days, the experiment group added feather degradation solution in this process. As a result, the lettuces cultivated with feather degradation solution had significant improvements in their fresh weight, total soluble solids concentration, amino acids concentration, and polypeptides concentration. This solution is successful as a fertilizer used for soilless cultivation. It has great potential in the future to be developed into a sustainable fertilizer for both in-soil and soilless farming.
