Prishka Pariyar¹*, Avijit Dutta² and Dawa Bhutia³

¹Research Scholar, Department of Research and Education, Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, Darjeeling, India
²Wildlife Naturalist and Director at East Quest, Kolkata, India
³Assistant Professor, Darjeeling Government College, Darjeeling, India

*Corresponding Author: Prishka Pariyar, Scholar, Department of Research and Education, Padmaja Naidu Himalayan Zoological Park, Darjeeling, India.

Received: December 06, 2021; Published: December 22, 2021

Abstract

Vermicompost is nutrient-rich casts generated by the earthworms that can be used as biofertilizers. Since the potential of fabricating vermicompost varies amongst species, the present study was conducted to determine the vermicomposting efficiency of local earthworm species of Darjeeling hills and Eisenia fetida, that was subjected to three different types of treatments for 60 days: monoculture of E. fetida (set 1), polyculture of readily available local species (set 2), and polyculture of E. fetida and local earthworm species (set 3). At the end of the treatment, while harvesting the compost, all the treatments showed an increase in population size and high decomposition of waste materials. The content of major macronutrients such as organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium did not vary significantly between the vermicompost obtained through different culturing techniques, although considerable differences in population increase after inoculation were observed. Thus, based on reproductive potential and chemical analysis, it may be concluded that the polyculture of local earthworm species of the Darjeeling region and E. fetida can be utilized in generating vermicompost most efficiently, which in turn can contribute towards organic farming and supplementing to the income of the farmers.

Keywords: Local Earthworms; Eisenia fetida; Vermicompost

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Citation

Citation: Prishka Pariyar., et al. “A Report on Vermicomposting Efficiency of Earthworm Species from Darjeeling Hills and Eisenia fetida". Acta Scientific Veterinary Sciences 4.1 (2022): 157-160.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Prishka Pariyar., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.