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Effects of interaction between vermicompost and probiotics on soil property, yield and quality of tomato.

SHEN Fei1,2, ZHU Tong-bin3, TENG Ming-jiao1, CHEN Yue1, LIU Man-qiang1,2, HU Feng1, LI Hui-xin1,2*   

  1. (1College of Resources and Environmental Science, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, China; 2Jiangsu Collaborative Innovation Center for Solid Organic Waste Resource Utilization, Nanjing 210095, China; 3Institute of Karst Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences/Key Laboratory of Karst Dynamics, Ministry of Land and Resources & Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guilin 541004, Guangxi, China)
  • Online:2016-02-18 Published:2016-02-18

Abstract: In this study, we investigated the effects of two strains of probiotic bacteria (Bacillus megaterium BM and Bacillus amyloliquefaciens BA) combined with chemical fertilizers and vermicompost on the soil property, the yield and quality of tomato. The results showed that under the same nutrient level, vermicompost significantly increased the yield, soluble sugar and protein contents of fruit, the soil pH and available phosphorus when compared with chemical fertilizers. Vermicompost combined with probiotics not only increased the tomato yield, soluble sugar, protein and vitamin C contents, sugar/acid ratio of fruit, and reduced the organic acid and nitrate nitrogen contents of fruit, also increased the soil pH and nitrate nitrogen content, and reduced soil electric conductivity  when compared with vermicompost treatment. This improved efficiency was better than that by chemical fertilizers combined with probiotics. For BA and BM applied with chemical fertilizers or vermicompost, both stains had no significant effect on tomato quality. When coapplied with vermicompost, BA and BM showed significant difference in tomato yield. High soil available phosphorus content was determined when BM was combined with chemical fertilizers, while high soil available potassium content was obtained when BA was combined with vermicompost. Our results suggested that probiotics and vermicompost could be used as alternatives of chemical fertilizers in tomato production and soil fertility improvement.