Biopesticide Compost From Food Waste And Chinese Medicinal Herbal Residues

Pest issue remains as one of the major factors reducing crop yields of local organic farmers in Hong Kong, especially due to increase in soil temperature caused by climate change in recent years. An innovative composting approach has been proposed by co-composting food waste (FW) with Chinese medicinal herbal residues (CMHR) to produce low cost compost with bio-pesticide properties derived from CMHR. Their antipathogenic effect against the pure culture of two phytopathogens, Alternaria solani and Fusarium oxysporum were ~54% and ~38% higher than that of food waste compost, respectively. Mature compost at 0, 2.5, 5 and 10% was respectively applied to soil inoculated with either  A. solani or F. oxysporum. The results showed that 5% (dry weight basis, w/w) FW-CMHR compost was the optimum application rate, and was about 1.2 times and 2 times that of the yield of Chinese cabbage and cherry tomator growing in control soil without inoculum.