Abstract            Volume:10  Issue-7  Year-2022         Original Research Articles

Online ISSN : 2347 - 3215 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcret@gmail.com

Rapid expansion of urbanization and industrialization has led to generation of huge quantities of waste materials where majority of organic waste is dumped in landfill sites, creates the organic load on the ground water, and more emissions of landfill gases. The best possible alternative measure to minimize these potential pollutants is through the process of vermicomposting because worms have the ability to convert organic waste into wealth. Vermicomposting is an ecofriendly, low cost effective and an effective way to recycle agricultural and kitchen waste. Thus a field experiment was conducted to identify best bedding materials for vermicompost production at Jimma Agricultural Research Center, Southwestern Ethiopia. The experiment consisted of three types of bedding materials including (cattle manure, donkey manure and poultry droppings) and four incubation periods (40, 60, 80 and 90 days) arranged factorially in completely randomized block design (RCBD) in three replications. The performance of worms was measured based on more suitable for vermicomposting including biological parameter, which measured the growth rate, the chemical nature of compost (pH), final number of worm, organic matter content (OM) of worm casts, total nitrogen (Tot. N) content and carbon to nitrogen ratio. The ANOVA table showed that all of the above mentioned parameters showed significant variations observed due to different bedding materials used. The LSD at (p < 0.05) probability level demonstrated that donkey manure followed by poultry droppings was more influential in worm biomass production, growth rate, total nitrogen and organic carbon content. In case of pH content of worm cast, it reveals that the optimum pH for worm growth rate is near to neutral condition.

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