The Effects of Irrigation with Innovative Compost Tea from Food Waste on Some Tomato Traits

Food waste is one of the biggest challenges in today’s modern world and leads to greenhouse gas emissions and global warming issues. Converting organic waste into vermicompost and compost tea by efficient biotechnology methods could prevent natural resources depletion and decrease carbon footprint. These soil conditioners promote soil fertility, crop yields, soil resources conservation, and community health.

Based on this study, organic waste of the industrial kitchen of the science and research branch university, was converted to vermicompost. The compost tea was produced by a mixture of seaweed, vermicompost, molasses, and humic acid. Greenhouse studies to compare the effect of experimental treatments including irrigation level with compost tea 25, 50, and 100% and chemical fertilizer containing calcium nitrate, potassium sulfate, and 10-52-10 fertilizer on vegetative and biochemical traits of tomato (Karun variety) in six replications were performed.

The results showed that irrigation with 100% compost tea and chemical fertilizer, were not significantly different from each other and had the highest effect compared to other treatments. Irrigation with 100% compost tea had the greatest effect on leaf number (66 pieces), plant height (29.8 mm), root length (660 mm), and root fresh weight (29.84 mg). The highest number of flower clusters (8.94 clusters), root diameter (8.94 mm), peroxidase enzyme (3.5 µmol mg-1 protein min-1), chlorophyll a (14.44 mg g-1 FM), and total chlorophyll content (191.91 mg g-1 FM) obtained from 25% compost tea.

There was no difference between irrigation with 25 and 100% compost tea, and chemical fertilizers. Furthermore, they had similar effects on most of the studied traits. So, irrigation with compost tea can decrease chemical fertilizers in tomato fields and leads to soil conservation.