Banana compost could boost crop yields, a study finds

[CAIRO] Using old banana trees to make compost may help boost crop yields while cutting downwater埃及研究员说，和肥料的使用。

Banana-based fertiliser could cutabout 20 per cent of the water used in irrigating maize and lead to better yields and improved soil properties — such as availability of micronutrients and soil moisture — a researcher at Egypt’s National Research Centre has found.

Banana trees — in fact a large herb — only fruit once and most of the farmers in Egypt, who plant more than 52,000 acres of bananas, burn the trees (stems) after they have borne fruit, even though they are hard to burn because of their high moisture content.

Now, Nesreen H. Abou-Baker, who was awarded a PhD last month for her research, says these trees could be put to better use.

她将香蕉残留物与肥料和微生物（例如酵母菌）混合，并在玉米和豆类的连续生长季节期间在开罗北部的Noubariya农业研究站进行了田间实验中的堆肥。

“Using banana compost we getgreater efficiency of nutrients in soil compared with other fertilisers,良好的充气与灌溉水的施用相对较低, anddecreased nutrient losses by leaching," said Abou-Baker.

The concentration of heavy metals — cadmium, lead, nickel — in the plants was also reduced when grown with banana compost instead of conventional mineral fertilisers.

堆肥may be of use in other banana growing areas, outside Egypt, Abou-Baker said. It could either be prepared by farmers themselves or commercially produced and sold to farmers.

国家研究中心农业部副教授Salah Saad Zarad说：“矿物质肥料太昂贵了，无法大量beplay下载官网西西软件用于发展中国家的盈利生产，因此农作物残留物是在土壤中养分的有前途的替代品……很容易……很容易并便宜地在农场上可用”。

Zarad said the findings令人鼓舞，并建议它可能更多成本效益to set up commercial production of compost, instead of banana farmers producing it individually。

Ahmad Gamal El-Dein Wahba, vice president for research at the Agricultural Extension & Rural Development Research Institute, said: "This finding could make farmers better appreciate banana compost". He added that even banana trees infected with bunchy top virus, which have to be destroyed, could now be utilised.