Microbial Activity during Composting and Plant Growth Impact: A Review

Abstract

Replacing harmful chemical pesticides with compost extracts is steadily gaining attention, offering an effective way for plant growth enhancement and disease management. Food waste has been a major issue globally due to its negative effects on the environment and human health. The methane and other harmful organisms released from the untreated waste have been identified as causes of this issue. Soil bacteria impart a very important role in biogeochemical cycles. The interactions between plants and bacteria in the rhizosphere are some of the factors that determine the health and fertility of the soil. Free-living soil bacteria are known to promote plant growth through colonizing the plant root. PGPR (Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria) inoculants in compost are being commercialized as they help in the improvement of crop growth yield and provide safeguard and resistance to crops from disease. Our focus is to understand the mechanism of this natural, wet waste recycling process and implementation of a sustainable operative adaptation with microbial association to ameliorate the waste recycling system.

Short- and long-term effects of continuous compost amendment on soil microbiome community

“…Members of these bacterial groups are often involved in the degradation of complex organic compounds (Fierer et al, 2007; McBride et al, 2014; Cesarano et al, 2017; van der Bom et al, 2018) and are highly abundant during composting (Neher et al, 2013). Pseudomonadota, Bacteroidota and Bacillota are known as hydrolytic, fermentative bacteria (Shanks et al, 2011; Rath et al, 2022), and have been found to be relatively more abundant in manure-fertilized soils (Hartmann et al, 2015; Francioli et al, 2016; Hartman et al, 2018; van der Bom et al, 2018; Yang and Zhang, 2022). Some of these taxonomic groups have high relative abundance in nutrient-rich environments, and Bacteroidota and Pseudomonadota have also been generally described as copiotrophic (Fierer et al, 2007; Cesarano et al, 2017).…”

“…Most of the significantly altered OTUs were more abundant in the compost-amended soils, especially in soils amended with the highest compost levels. At both sites, most of these OTUs belonged to the class Bacilli as well as the Actinobacteria, which are known to be associated with composting processes or enriched in organically fertilized soils (Paul Chowdhury et al, 2019; Rath et al, 2022), and the class Cytophagia. In contrast, the relative abundance of Pedosphaerae decreased in the compost-amended soil in NY.…”

“…Originally, this bacterial family was identified upon isolation of a representative member from a polluted farmland sample, and was described as chemo-organotroph (Zhou et al, 2008). One of the two OTUs was further classified as a member of the genus Steroidobacter , reported to be among the most abundant genera in composting processes of dairy manure with plant additives, textile or distilled grain waste (Biyada et al, 2021; Rath et al, 2022; Wang et al, 2022).…”

Short- and long-term effects of continuous compost amendment on soil microbiome community

“…Members of these bacterial groups are often involved in the degradation of complex organic compounds [9] , [11] , [55] , [56] and are highly abundant during composting [26] . Pseudomonadota, Bacteroidota and Bacillota are known as hydrolytic, fermentative bacteria [57] , [58] , and have been found to be relatively more abundant in manure-fertilized soils [2] , [9] , [16] , [53] , [59] . Some of these taxonomic groups have high relative abundance in nutrient-rich environments, and Bacteroidota and Pseudomonadota have also been generally described as copiotrophic [11] , [55] .…”

“…Most of the significantly altered OTUs were more abundant in the compost-amended soils, especially in soils amended with the highest compost levels. At both sites, most of these OTUs belonged to the class Bacilli as well as the Actinobacteria , which are known to be associated with composting processes or enriched in organically fertilized soils [48] , [58] , and the class Cytophagia. In contrast, the relative abundance of Pedosphaerae decreased in the compost-amended soil in NY.…”