Composting of cow dung and crop residues using termite mounds as bulking agent

Published Date

October 2014, Vol.169:731–741, doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2014.06.110

Title 

Composting of cow dung and crop residues using termite mounds as bulking agent

• Author 

• Tanmoy Karak ^a,b,,,
• Indira Sonar ^b
• Ranjit K. Paul ^c
• Sampa Das ^d
• R.K. Boruah ^b
• Amrit K. Dutta ^b
• Dilip K. Das ^a

• aDepartment of Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science, Faculty of Agriculture, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Mohanpur-741252, Nadia, West Bengal, India
• bUpper Assam Advisory Centre, Tea Research Association, Dikom-786101, Assam, India
• cIndian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute, New Delhi 110012, India
• dDibrugarh Polytechnic, Lahowal, Dibrugarh-786010, Assam, India

Received 6 June 2014. Revised 28 June 2014. Accepted 30 June 2014. Available online 23 July 2014.

Highlights

• •
  Composting of crop residues with termite mound is composed and low cost technology.
• •
  Addition of termite mound as composting materials decrease composting time.
• •
  Termite mound addition improves the quality of finished compost.
• •
  Incorporation of termite mound significantly improved NPK in prepared compost.

Abstract

The present study reports the suitability of termite mounds as a bulking agent for composting with crop residues and cow dung in pit method. Use of 50 kg termite mound with the crop residues (stover of ground nut: 361.65 kg; soybean: 354.59 kg; potato: 357.67 kg and mustard: 373.19 kg) and cow dung (84.90 kg) formed a good quality compost within 70 days of composting having nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium as 20.19, 3.78 and 32.77 g kg⁻¹ respectively with a bulk density of 0.85 g cm⁻³. Other physico-chemical and germination parameters of the compost were within Indian standard, which had been confirmed by the application of multivariate analysis of variance and multivariate contrast analysis. Principal component analysis was applied in order to gain insight into the characteristic variables. Four composting treatments formed two different groups when hierarchical cluster analysis was applied.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

• Compost maturity
• Co-composting
• Crop residues
• Multivariate analysis of variance
• Termite mound

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• ⁎ 
  Corresponding author at: Upper Assam Advisory Centre, Tea Research Association, Dikom-786101, Assam, India. Tel.: +91 9435861567; fax: +91 373 2387556.

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