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Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties

Rearing insects is expected to dramatically increase during the next few years, and this will be associated with generating high quantities of frass (insect excreta). It is necessary to find solutions allowing the efficient valorization of these by-products before a major upscaling of the industry t...

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Autores principales: Houben, David, Daoulas, Guillaume, Faucon, Michel-Pierre, Dulaurent, Anne-Maïmiti
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7069999/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32170150
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61765-x
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author Houben, David
Daoulas, Guillaume
Faucon, Michel-Pierre
Dulaurent, Anne-Maïmiti
author_facet Houben, David
Daoulas, Guillaume
Faucon, Michel-Pierre
Dulaurent, Anne-Maïmiti
author_sort Houben, David
collection PubMed
description Rearing insects is expected to dramatically increase during the next few years, and this will be associated with generating high quantities of frass (insect excreta). It is necessary to find solutions allowing the efficient valorization of these by-products before a major upscaling of the industry takes place. Therefore, this study aims at investigating the fertilizer potential of frass. A pot experiment was established and soil was amended either with mealworm (Tenebrio molitor L.) frass (10 Mg ha(−1)), with mineral fertilizer (NPK) at equivalent nutrient level to frass or with a mixture of 50% NPK and 50% frass. Changes of soil properties and growth and nutrient uptake by barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) were then analyzed. Due to its rapid mineralization and the presence of nutrient in a readily-available form, we found that frass is as efficient as mineral NPK fertilizer to improve biomass and N, P and K uptake by barley. Compared to mineral fertilizer, water soluble P concentration is five times lower in the presence of frass, which prevents P from loss and sorption onto soil constituents. More importantly, BIOLOG EcoPlate reveals that addition of frass stimulates soil microbial activity, especially when it is mixed with mineral fertilizer, suggesting a synergistic effect between both amendments. Taken together, our results indicate that frass has a great potential to be used as a partial or a complete substitute for mineral NPK fertilizer. This is especially relevant in the context of a reduced availability of mineral fertilizers while being consistent with circular economy’s principles.
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spelling pubmed-70699992020-03-22 Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties Houben, David Daoulas, Guillaume Faucon, Michel-Pierre Dulaurent, Anne-Maïmiti Sci Rep Article Rearing insects is expected to dramatically increase during the next few years, and this will be associated with generating high quantities of frass (insect excreta). It is necessary to find solutions allowing the efficient valorization of these by-products before a major upscaling of the industry takes place. Therefore, this study aims at investigating the fertilizer potential of frass. A pot experiment was established and soil was amended either with mealworm (Tenebrio molitor L.) frass (10 Mg ha(−1)), with mineral fertilizer (NPK) at equivalent nutrient level to frass or with a mixture of 50% NPK and 50% frass. Changes of soil properties and growth and nutrient uptake by barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) were then analyzed. Due to its rapid mineralization and the presence of nutrient in a readily-available form, we found that frass is as efficient as mineral NPK fertilizer to improve biomass and N, P and K uptake by barley. Compared to mineral fertilizer, water soluble P concentration is five times lower in the presence of frass, which prevents P from loss and sorption onto soil constituents. More importantly, BIOLOG EcoPlate reveals that addition of frass stimulates soil microbial activity, especially when it is mixed with mineral fertilizer, suggesting a synergistic effect between both amendments. Taken together, our results indicate that frass has a great potential to be used as a partial or a complete substitute for mineral NPK fertilizer. This is especially relevant in the context of a reduced availability of mineral fertilizers while being consistent with circular economy’s principles. Nature Publishing Group UK 2020-03-13 /pmc/articles/PMC7069999/ /pubmed/32170150 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61765-x Text en © The Author(s) 2020 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Houben, David
Daoulas, Guillaume
Faucon, Michel-Pierre
Dulaurent, Anne-Maïmiti
Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties
title Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties
title_full Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties
title_fullStr Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties
title_full_unstemmed Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties
title_short Potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: Impact on crop growth and soil properties
title_sort potential use of mealworm frass as a fertilizer: impact on crop growth and soil properties
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7069999/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/32170150
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-61765-x
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