Hi, I'm a Red Wiggler! I'm a fascinating creature and I want to be your best friend. Even though I'm small, I am mighty as well! I can help you transform a ‘wasteland’ into a ‘wonderland.’ Here I present you some of the many benefits that I can bestow upon humankind:
Agriculture:
Industrial applications:
Medical applications:
The vermi-composting & vermi-agro-production technologies can together maintain the ‘global human sustainability cycle’ & ‘circular economy’– ‘using food wastes (negative economic & environmental value) of the society to produce food (positive socio-economic value) for the society again’. And if vermicompost can ‘replace’ the ‘chemical fertilizers’ for production of ‘safe organic foods’ which has now been proved worldwide, it will be a giant step towards achieving global ‘social, economic & environmental sustainability.
Agriculture:
- Vermicompost consistently improves seed germination, enhancing seedling growth and development, and increasing plant productivity.
- Vermicompost also has very ‘high porosity’, ‘aeration’, ‘drainage’ and ‘water holding capacity’ than the conventional compost. Thus vermicompost use reduces the requirement of water for irrigation by 30-40 %.
- Vermicompost ‘suppress plant disease’ in crops and inhibit the soil-born fungal diseases. In a study on wheat crops, there was a significantly ‘less incidence of pests and disease attacks’ in vermicompost applied crops which reduced use of chemical pesticides by over 75 %.
- The biggest advantage of great social significance is that the food produced is completely organic ‘safe & chemical-free’. Studies indicate that vermicompost is at least 4 times more nutritive than the conventional composts and gives 30-40 % higher yield of crops over chemical fertilizers.
Industrial applications:
- Earthworms have been found to bioaccumulate heavy metals, pesticides and lipophilic organic micropollutants like the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) from the soil. The result is that the polluted land is not only ‘cleaned-up’ but also ‘improved in physical, chemical & biological quality’.
- Earthworms body work as a ‘biofilter’ removing chemicals including heavy metals and pathogens from treated wastewater making it fit & also nutritive for ‘reuse’ in irrigation of parks.
- Waste degradation & composting by earthworms is a rapid and nearly odorless process, reducing composting time by more than half and the end product is both ‘disinfected’, ‘detoxified’ and ‘highly nutritive’.
- Nutritive feed materials for poultry, dairy and fishery industries.
Medical applications:
- The coelomic fluid of earthworms has been reported to have anti-pathogenic activities and are good biological compounds for the production of ‘antibiotics.’
- Earthworms ‘leukocytes’ can recognize human cancer cells as ‘foreign’ and can kill them. A peptide ‘lumbricin’ isolated from Lumbricus terrestris by a Japanese scientist has been shown to ‘inhibit mammary tumors’ in mice. The group of enzymes lumbrokinase (LK) also promises to wage a ‘war on cancer.’
The vermi-composting & vermi-agro-production technologies can together maintain the ‘global human sustainability cycle’ & ‘circular economy’– ‘using food wastes (negative economic & environmental value) of the society to produce food (positive socio-economic value) for the society again’. And if vermicompost can ‘replace’ the ‘chemical fertilizers’ for production of ‘safe organic foods’ which has now been proved worldwide, it will be a giant step towards achieving global ‘social, economic & environmental sustainability.