Nutritional values of some biowastes as soil amendments

As a result of increased population, improved standards of living, and stri ct environmental laws, biowastes have been generated in huge quantities. Th us, land applications of these wastes are desirable, or even necessary, to keep the environment healthy and to conserve natural resources. Yet, the su ccess of such uses requires knowledge of complex biochemical reactions when the wastes are applied to soils. To obtain this knowledge, we evaluated so il amendment properties, primarily nitrogen (N) mineralization/immobilizati on of six biowastes when used as plant growth media. An immature yard trimm ings compost, ground fresh cum stovers, a commercial peat moss, a chicken m anure, and two biosolids were each mixed with a Mollisol at either 25 perce nt and 50 percent by volume for the plant based wastes, or at 25 percent an d 5.0 percent by weight for the animal based wastes. Treatments with urea a t 0, 70 and 210 mg N kg(-1) were included for comparison. The treated soils were incubated moist for two weeks at which time they were sampled for che mical analysis, and planted to tomatoes. The results showed that those wast es, when added to soil, produced growth media with C/N < 15, and released i norganic N that increased dry matter yield of tomatoes many times over that of the unamended control. In contrast, a waste amended soil with a C/N > 2 0 immobilized some inorganic N, reduced plant growth, and caused N deficien cy in tomatoes. Such a deficiency was characterized by low N concentrations in leaves (< 2.0 percent) and chlorosis, which corresponded to a color ind ex of 0.25 or less. Biowaste amendments also affected soil P extractability differently: Chicken manure increased NaHCO3-extractable P many fold over the control, whereas corn stover, peat moss and raw biosolids did not. The yard trimmings compost and the anaerobically digested biosolids increased s oil P moderately.