
What is crop residue breakdown?
Myths and Facts about Residue Breakdown. Crop residue serves an important role in physically protecting soil by preventing soil erosion during rain events or high winds. Also, crop residue plays a significant role in enhancing the soil biological community by providing sources of organic carbon and nitrogen for its energy or food needs.
Why is it important to manage crop residues after harvesting?
Retention of crop residues after harvesting is considered to be an effective antierosion measure. Crop residues can improve soil structure, increase organic matter content in the soil, reduce evaporation, and help fix CO2 in the soil. Good residue management practices on agricultural lands have many positive impacts on soil quality.
What is lignocellulosic crop residue composting?
Lignocellulosic crop residue (LCCR) composting is a cost-effective and sustainable approach for addressing environmental pollution associated with open biomass burning and application of chemical fertilizers in agriculture.
What are the alternative uses of crop residues?
Some studies, such as Haberl et al. (2011), account for alternative uses of the residues (e.g., fodder, bedding). Crop residues play an important role in limiting soil erosion and in maintaining soil organic matter.

What is crop residue management?
Crop residue management means maintaining cover on sixty (60) percent of the soil surface at planting to protect water quality.
What is agricultural crop residue?
Crop residues are materials left in an agricultural field after the crop has been harvested. These residues include stalks and stubble (stems), leaves and seed pods. Good management of field residues can increase efficiency of irrigation and control of erosion.
Which crop residue material can be used for substrate?
These residues include husks, seeds, bagasse, molasses and roots. They can be used as animal fodder and soil amendment, fertilizers and in manufacturing.
What are the composition of agro residue?
1.1 Agricultural and Forestry Residues Agricultural residues include rice straw, wheat straw, rice husk, and corn stover, which are mostly left on the fields after harvests and used for fodder and landfill material or burnt in many places. Forestry residues consist of branches, leaves, bark, and other portions of wood.
What is residual chemical?
The term 'residual' applies to a number of herbicides that have a long lasting activity in the soil. These herbicides are often applied directly to the soil prior to planting crops, pre-emergent. Residual herbicides rely on moisture and microbial activity to break down.
How do you manage plant residues and minimize soil erosion?
Residue management (through conservation tillage) for erosion control can be enhanced by: Selection of crops that produce large amounts of residue (such as corn and grain sorghum) and/or a high degree of soil cover per pound of residue (such as wheat).
What is crop residue biomass?
Crop residues, such as corn stover (leaves and stalks of corn plants left in the field after harvest), are poised to be a significant source as a feedstock for biofuel production and as biomass for creation of electricity, but prohibitively high collection and transportation costs are often cited as major impediments ...
What are use of crop residues?
1.4 Crop residues are primarily used as bedding material for animals, livestock feed, soil mulching, bio-gas generation, bio-manure/compost, thatching for rural homes, mushroom cultivation, biomass energy production, fuel for domestic and industrial use, etc.
What is fertilizer residue?
The residual effect of fertilizer commonly refers to the favourable response of crops to the major nutrients applied to a previous crop. In addition, certain secondary and minor nutrients may remain and bring about beneficial results.
How are agri residues used as a source of biomass energy?
Agricultural residues constitute a major part of the total annual production of biomass residues and are an important source of energy both for domestic as well as industrial purposes. Residues are used as fuel, but a large amount is burnt in the field.
Which of the following is a process that involves planting seeds into the residue of the previous crop?
No-till farmingNo-till farming involves planting seeds into the residue of the previous crop, with no tillage between harvest. No till leaves 60 to 70 percent of a field covered with crop residue.
Why do you need to apply the physicochemical treatment on crop residues as animal feed?
Treatment improves rate and level of digestion, and thereby also the intake, but it does not make the bad feed into a good feed. The combined effect of increased digestibility and intake is shown in table 1 where improved digestibility alone increases the nutrient intake with about 17%.
Why are crop residues important?
Crop residues play an important role in limiting soil erosion and in maintaining soil organic matter. The quantities needed for these purposes are a function of the crop grown, the management practices used (e.g., crop rotation, tillage practices), the soil type, field topography, and climate among other factors.
How do crop residues help the soil?
Crop residues can improve soil structure, increase organic matter content in the soil, reduce evaporation, and help fix CO2 in the soil. Good residue management practices on agricultural lands have many positive impacts on soil quality. Besides, crop residues can be used in biofuel production.
What is crop residue cover?
24.5.1 Crop residue cover. Crop residues are materials left on cultivated land after the crop has been harvested. Retention of crop residues after harvesting is considered to be an effective antierosion measure. Crop residues can improve soil structure, increase organic matter content in the soil, reduce evaporation, and help fix CO2 in the soil.
What is residue after harvest?
Crop residues remaining after harvest can act as a mulch that counteracts the destructive impact of rain and wind on soils and also help retain soil moisture, enhancing yields for subsequent crops.
Why do farmers burn crop residue?
Crop residue burning is convenient to the farmers, because narrow window get a get a between the wet season harvest and the dry season cropping, forcing the farmers to burn the residues to vacate the fields.
Is mulch a gas?
The gaseous composition of soil air under mulch depends on the nature of the mulch material (C:N ratio), its rate of decomposition, the soil moisture regime and the climatic condition. Plastic mulch is practically imper vious to carbon dioxide (CO2 ), a gas that is of prime importance for photosynthesis.
Is crop residue a renewable resource?
Crop residues, as lignocellulosic materials, have a potential source of renewable energy. In this context, the synthesis of biofuel from CRs and the mixing of biofuels with convectional fuels could save the exploitation of fossil fuel, which thereby reduces GHG emissions and helps to mitigate climate change.
Why are lignocellulosic crop residues burned?
However, in many countries, LCCRs are frequently burnt after harvest to facilitate land preparation, which causes massive environmental pollution and loss of plant nutrients ( Kim Oanh et al., 2018 ). The incorporation of LCCRs into soil reduces the amount of plant-available nitrogen as the microbial biomass which develops during decomposition of the lignocellulosic plant material needs more nitrogen than the amount that is provided by the substrate and the final breakdown products of LCCRs tend to be phytotoxic ( Ocio et al., 1991 ).
How do bacteria reduce the time required for composting?
Bacteria with both cellulolytic and nitrogen-fixing traits reduce the overall time required for composting , and accelerate the composting performance of the lignocellulosic waste by decreasing the C/N ratio, reducing odors and adding more value to the end products.
Why is lignocellulosic biomass resistant to degradation?
Lignocellulosic biomass is resistant to microbial degradation due to its inherent complexity and heterogeneity. Therefore, enhancement of LCCR composting requires pretreatment of LCCRs, which disrupts the tightly packed structure of the lignocellulosic biomass and exposes cellulose and hemicelluloses to enzymatic attack ( Agbor et al., 2011 ).
What are the microorganisms that make compost?
Nitrogen-fixing bacterial genera, such as Stenotrophomonas, Xanthomonas, Pseudomonas, Klebsiella, Alcaligenes, Achromobacter, and Caulobacter, isolated from the compost materials ( Pepe et al., 2013 ), have been previously described to be involved in organic matter degradation during composting ( Insam and de Bertoldi, 2007 ). While composting lignocellulosic oil palm empty fruit bunch (OPEFB), Zainudin et al. (2013) isolated 27 indigenous cellulolytic bacteria and hemicellulolytic bacteria, most of the strains of which were closely related to nitrogen-fixing Bacillus, Cellulomonas, Paenibacillus and Rhizobium strains, suggesting that the presence of these cellulolytic nitrogen-fixing strains may have contributed to the reduction of the composting period of OPEFB. Composting of LCCR using CNFB as microbial inoculants for enhancing the composting process and improving the quality of compost has been investigated extensively. Abdulla (2007) inoculated three cellulolytic nitrogen fixing actinomycete strains of the genera Micromonospora, Streptomyces, and Nocardioides in rice straw composting and the results demonstrated that the bacterial inoculants accelerated the composting process and reduced the bulk volume of the rice waste by 38.6%–64%, after three months, in contrast to 13.6% in the non-inoculated control.
How does CNFB help the environment?
Inoculation of compost materials with CNFB has been shown to be the most environment-friendly and the quickest way to recycle lignocellulosic biomass back into the soil and enhance the physicochemical properties and the biological properties of the soil. Bacteria with both cellulolytic and nitrogen-fixing traits reduce the overall time required for composting, and accelerate the composting performance of the lignocellulosic waste by decreasing the C/N ratio, reducing odors and adding more value to the end products. The usage of this microbial inoculum at optimized conditions could speed up the bioconversion process from six months (under natural conditions) to 3 weeks–4 weeks. The nutrient-enriched compost product increases microbial biomass carbon, the organic matter and total concentration of N, P, K in the soil, prevents air pollution and water pollution, reduces landfill space, and controls soil erosion, runoff, and sedimentation. Composting with cellulose-degrading nitrogen-fixing bacterial inoculants may, therefore, be a suitable method for reducing environmental pollution due to burning of crop residues and the use of chemical fertilizers, as well as for creating a development path for sustainable agriculture.
What is LCCR compost?
Lignocellulosic crop residue (LCCR) composting is a cost-effective and sustainable approach for addressing environmental pollution associated with open biomass burning and application of chemical fertilizers in agriculture. The value-added bio-product of the composting process contributes to the improvement of the soil properties and plant growth in an environment-friendly way. However, the conventional process employed for composting LCCRs is slow and becomes an impediment for farmers who plant two or three crops a year. This concern has led to the development of different techniques for rapid composting of LCCRs. The use of cellulolytic nitrogen-fixing microorganisms for composting has emerged as a promising method for enhancing LCCR composting and quality of the compost. Therefore, this review addresses the recent progress on the potential use of cellulolytic nitrogen-fixing bacteria (CNFB) for LCCR composting and discusses various applications of nutrient-rich compost for sustainable agriculture to increase crop yields in a nature-friendly way. This knowledge of bacteria with both cellulose-degrading and nitrogen-fixing activities is significant with respect to rapid composting, soil fertility, plant growth and sustainable management of the lignocellulosic agricultural waste and it provides a means for the development of new technology for sustainability.
What is the function of CNFB?
CNFB are a group of microorganisms that produce cellulases to break down the cellulose molecules into simple sugars, and produce nitrogenase to catalyze the conversion of atmospheric nitrogen (N 2) to fixed nitrogen (NH 3 ). Such species are helpful in transforming lignocellulosic and other cellulosic resources into commodities and fertilizers with increased nutritional quality of carbohydrates and higher levels of assimilable nitrogen ( Hardy and Wiley, 1990 ).
POTENTIAL FOR THE BETTER UTILIZATION OF CROP RESIDUES AND AGRO-INDUSTRIAL BY-PRODUCTS IN ANIMAL FEED IG IN THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT
Animal Production and Health Section, IAEA, PO Box 100 A-1400 Vienna (Austria)
POTENTIAL FOR THE BETTER UTILIZATION OF RESIDUES AND AGRO-INDUSTRIAL BY-PRODUCTS BY MONOGASTRIC ANIMALS IN CENTRAL AMERICA
Colegio de Postgraduados Institución de Ensénanza e Investgación en Ciencias Agricolas Chapingo, Mexico
