| dc.description.abstract | Soil infertility is on an increase with in Uganda and the entire African region thus leading to an inversely proportional agricultural production to the population growth. Due to high poverty levels especially among the rural people who engage themselves in agricultural production, the use of inorganic fertilizers is low and the recommended application rate of these fertilizers in the Abuja declaration has not been reached to half of it. Use of ordinary compost by the farmers has also not proved to be worthy because of its bulkiness, low nutrient content, longer composting period as well as inadequate knowledge by the farmers to carry out the composting.
Due to the above challenges, new technologies in composting including; vermicomposting and magcomposting must be explored properly so as to bridge a gap between agricultural production and population growth. To partly address the above challenges, this research aimed at determining the nutrient content of vermicompost and magcompost, assessing the effect of composting period on the chemical quality, and assessing the turning capacity of earthworms and maggots on the compost. Vermicomposting involves the use of earthworms and the most common type used is the Eisenia foetida while magcomposting involves the use of maggots these including the black soldier fly (BSF) and Musca domestica larvae and the two are bioconversion processes that have higher conversion rate of organic materials than any other composting method thus higher mass reduction rate.
The experiment was set in composting beds of (2.1mx0.45mx0.3m) and composting trays of (0.75mx0.75mx0.07m) for vermicomposting and magcomposting respectively at ACCE farm and at the end of the experiment, earthworms proved to convert complex components of the organic material more than maggots and this may be attributed to the high microbial activity within the gut of the earthworms. This was significantly evidenced by higher nitrogen (2.1%), phosphorus (4.0%), potassium (7.7%) and pH (7.7) in vermicompost than magcompost. Furthermore, the nutrient contents of both the vermicompost and magcompost did not significantly differ with the duration of composting as well as turned or not. The high nutrient content of the vermicompost and magcompost is also attributed to the rice husks which were used as beddings in the poultry house since it contains high calcium, silicon, carbon and relative portions of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. In conclusion, vermicomposting and magcomposting are the new technologies that must be integrated together so as to improve the quality of organic waste and to promote environmentally sustainable agriculture. However, more studies are needed to assess the potential of earthworms and maggots in composting municipal solid waste | en_US |
