Physical properties of tender coconut husk compost as influenced by different co-composting strategies

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at College of Agriculture, Vellayani, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala Agricultural University, from October 2024 to December 2024 to evaluate different composting strategies in generating quality compost from tender coconut husk, a major organic waste generated from tender coconut water industry. The study comprised of nine composting treatments with tender coconut husk composted along with different inputs including poultry manure, farmyard manure (FYM), lime, rock phosphate, urea, and various microbial inoculants. The experiment was laid out in a Completely Randomized Design with three replications. Composting could be effectively carried out and the major physical properties of the composts including colour, bulk density, particle size and moisture content were assessed and are discussed in this paper. Among the treatments, composting tender coconut husk (90 kg) with poultry manure (10 kg), FYM (5 kg), lime (0.5 kg), rock phosphate (0.5 kg), and Trichoderma asperellum (250 g) resulted in better physical properties of the compost in terms of significantly lower bulk density (0.210 g cm⁻³) and lower moisture content (16.03%), comparable to another co- composting treatment T3 ie., 90 kg tender coconut husk + 10 kg poultry manure + 0.5 kg rock phosphate + 0.5 kg lime + 250 g Trichoderma asperellum