Search

Numerous coal fired plants operating in different parts of the world produce huge amount offly-ash every year. Such large scale generation of this waste material poses several problems,the most important ones being environmental pollution and occupation of large areas of landfor storage and disposal. Hence, the urgent and imperative needs to overcome these problemsthrough not only safe disposal but also gainful utilization of these materials cannot probablybe overemphasized. Among various uses of fly-ash, its application to agricultural soils hasshown encouraging results in many countries owing to the fact that the waste contents manyessential plant nutrients in varying concentrations. However, the major problem of recyclingfly-ash in agriculture is that most of the nutrient elements in this waste material remainlargely in insoluble forms and hence do not become available to plants in requiredconcentrations. Under this context, use of fly-ash along with organic materials appears to bean effective proposition. In view of high efficiency of vermicomposting biotechnology inincreasing the pace of the composting process and also in encouraging higher availability ofdifferent nutrients with the help of epigeic earthworms, a series of studies were carried out toassess the possibility of improving the usability of fly-ash in agriculture in combination withorganic wastes through adoption of vermicomposting. The results of the investigation showedvermicomposting to increase the availability of different major and micro nutrients in fly-ash.On farm trials carried out on use of vermicomposted fly-ash and organic wastes showed useof 15 ton per hectare of vennicomposted fly-ash to result in significant yield increments inpotato cultivation. This also reduced the application of 40% of mineral fertilization for thiscultivation.