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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...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2020
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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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7069999 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2020 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
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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