Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Benefits of Vermi
effect of using Conventional Fertilizer is that soil will turn acidic. It is useless to apply Conventional Fertilizer when the soil pH is lower than 4.0 due to fixation of nutrients. 
(a)(i)
Graph showing the relationship between Acidic Soil and the Nutrients Absorption Ability of palm roots.
Application of Conventional Fertilizer reduce soil pH to lower than 3.0 .
(a)(ii)
Soil pH is 5.0 in the interrows because Conventional Fertilizer is seldom applied here.
(Moist Soil Surface)
Palm Base were applied with high amounts of Conventional Fertilizer. Soil pH was reduced to 3.1 after applying Conventional Fertilizer. (Moist Soil Surface)
U-Chong Oil Palm Fertilizer is applied on axil. It helps to raise the soil pH.
For Sustainable and Long Term Soil Improvement purposes, U-Chong has produced an Excellent Soil Conditioner named Humik Soil™.
(b)
- It helps to improve Soil pH, enhances the nutrients absorption ability of palm roots.
- It induces growth of micro-organism and earthworms which, in turn, loosen the soil, and improves its aeration and water retaining capacity.
(c)
At the same time, it induces growth of micro-organism and improves soil fertility.
Soil pH will be improved after switching from Conventional Fertilizer to U-Chong Oil Palm Fertilizer.
It is more cost effective to apply lesser amount of appropriate* Conventional Fertilizer when soil pH has improved to 5.5 – 6.5. All nutrients will be completely absorbed where U-Chong Oil Palm Fertilizer as a main nutrient supply and conventional fertilizer as a supplementary nutrient supply in order to maximize the production.
Combination of U-Chong Oil Palm Fertilizer and Conventional Fertilizer, palm trees enable to absorb nutrients from axil and root system, and therefore will increase the yield.
(According to our data and experience!)
* Apply the correct type and correct amount of Conventional Fertilizer according to leaf symptoms.
(d)
Earthworm casting found visibly on soil that contains organic matter after 3 weeks application of Humik Soil solution of 5:1000
Earthworm casting found visibly on soil that contains organic matter after 3 weeks application of Humik Soil solution of 5:1000
Soil pH raised to 6.2
(Soil pH was 4.0~4.5 before application)
(Soil pH was 4.0~4.5 before application)
Earthworm casting
U-Chong Humik Soil can be applied together during circle spraying. It increases the earthworm population and soil microbes. It attracts wild boar to search for earthworm at palm base.
Vermiculture - Applications and Benefits Benefits of Vermiculture
Beginning from 1995, in all documented trials conducted by Morarka Foundation, the users have been requested to rate the performance of vermicast. Each farmer has been requested to list three most important benefits derived by the use of vermicast. The summary analysis of benefits in the order of priorities reported by the farmers is given below:
Benefits in Agriculture during Phase-I of Vermiculture Development
• Additional price gain from the sale of farm produce• Better taste of food
• Bigger size of farm produce
• Less irrigation water requirement
• Cultivation became possible in saline-alkaline conditions
Initially most of the vermicast was produced as an on-farm input.
Benefits in Agriculture during Phase-II of Vermiculture Development
• Significantly more tillering, flowering and grain setting• Less insects and pests attack on crops after consistent use of vermicast
• Less weed infestation as compared to farm yard manure
With better understanding of vermicast applications, many more benefits were observed.
Benefits in Agriculture during Phase-III of Vermiculture Development
• Substituted chemical inputs ranging from 30-100 percent.• Reduced cost of cultivation ranging from 40-50 percent.
• Increased productivity by 20-40 percent.
Over the years, vermicast established its hardcore benefits in agriculture.
Benefits in Landscapes, Gardens and Nurseries
• It reduces water consumption.
• It improves the quality and appearance.
• It reduces the bulk (as compared to FYM).
• It eliminates the need for weeding operations.
• It increases the shelf life of flowers.
• It improves germination of seeds in nurseries.
Many benefits of vermicast have already made it to be a principal fertility management input for landscapes, gardens and nurseries.Many benefits of vermicast have already made it to be a principal fertility management input for landscapes, gardens and nurseries.
Benefits in Soil and Water Conservation
• It helps in stabilization of earthen structures through better vegetative growth.
• It promotes grass production in degraded open grass lands.
• Enables reclamation of waste lands for plantation & cultivation.
Vermicast applications has reduced cost of reclamation by 40-50 percent for waste lands.
Benefits in Plantation of Trees
• Helps in early stabilization of transplants.
• Enables early regeneration of partly degraded forest areas.
• Increases overall vegetation in hilly regions.
Vermicast has improved plants survival rates from average 40 percent to over 85 percent in most cases.
Comparison between Vermicast V/s. Chemical Fertilizers
| Criteria for Comparison | Chemical Fertilizers | Vermicast |
| Macro nutrient contents | Mostly contains only one (N in urea) or at the most two (N & P in DAP) nutrients in any one type of chemical fertilizer | Contains all i.e. nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) & potassium (K) in sufficient quantities |
| Secondary nutrient contents | Not available | Calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) & sulphur (S) is available in required quantities |
| Micro nutrient contents | Not available | Zinc (Zn), boron (B), manganese ( Min), iron (Fe), copper (Cu), molybdenum (Mo) and chlorine (CI) also present |
| pH balancing | Disturb soil pH to create salinity and alkalinity conditions | Helps in the control of soil pH and checks the salinity and alkalinity in soil |
| EC correction | Creates imbalance in soil EC Affecting nutrients assimilation | Helps in balancing the EC to improve plant nutrient adsorption |
| Organic carbon | Not available | Very high organic carbon and humus contents improves soil characteristics |
| Moisture retention capacity | Reduces moisture retention Capacity of the soil | Increases moistures retention capacity of the soil |
| Soil Texture | Damages soil texture to reduce aeration | Improves soil texture for better aeration |
| Beneficial bacteria fungi | Reduces biological activities and Thus the fertility is impaired | Very high biological life improves the soil fertility and productivity on sustainable basis |
| Plant growth hormones | Not available | Sufficient quantity helps in better growth and production |
Vermiculture Business Development
The success of vermiculture development has been entirely due to its business viability. In the initial years beginning with a very small investment of only Rs. 5,000/-, over the years entrepreneurs have come forward to setup large scale commercial units with investment upto Rs. 5,000,000/-. By and large a majority of the business units have been able to recover their investments in 1-3 years time.Business development plan for commercial units can be provided on demand.
Vermicast Application In Agriculture
The entire technology development of vermiculture in partnership with farmers enabled its applications development almost simultaneously. Based on thousands of monitored trials conducted for about ten years and in almost all 15 agro-climatic zones of India, we have developed vermicast applications in following categories:
Based on previous use of chemical fertilizers
• very high chemical fertilizers use areas
• moderate chemical fertilizers use areas
• low or negligible chemical fertilizers use areas
We have observed that in the category of very high chemical fertilizers use areas, substitution of vermicast can be done in about 3-5 crop seasons. In moderate chemical fertilizers use areas, the substitution has been done in about 2-3 crop seasons. In low or negligible chemical fertilizers use areas vermicast has been used to meet full requirements of nutrients for crops in first attempt itself.
Based on nutrients requirements of different crops
Generally, all agricultural crops have been categorized based on their nutrients consumption for per unit output from an area. For any given location all crops cultivated in that area are expected to produce certain optimum yields. Based on our experiences, we have divided them into following categories.
- All rainfed crops such as Sesame, Moong, Urad, Cowpea, Moth, Gwar, Gram, Mustard, Rapeseed, etc. are considered as low nutrients requirement crops. Traditionally no chemical fertilizers are used for their cultivation. In such crops an average of 200-300 kgs of vermicast per acre has given excellent results.
- In the second category of rainfed crops such as Bajra, Jwar, Castor, Isabgol, Fenugreek, Arhar, etc. farmers have been traditionally using farmyard manures. In these crops an average of 400-500 kgs of vermicast per acre has been found to give satisfactory yields.
- In third category of crops requiring moderate irrigation such as Sunflower, Barley, Maize, Wheat, etc. farmers generally use a combination of chemical fertilizers and farmyard manures. In most of these cases an average dose of 700-800 kgs of vermicast per acre has been recommended as a substitute for either of the two i.e. chemical fertilizer or farmyard manure as the case may be.
- In fourth category comprising of Tobacco, Beetroot, Onion, Carrot, Sweet Potato, Okra, Coriander, Brinjal, Cucumbers, Ginger, Opium, Mentha, etc. a dose of about 1000 kgs of vermicast per acre has been recommended as a substitute for chemical fertilizers. The use of farmyard manure has been also been reduced to 50 percent level.
- For the crops like Cabbage, Cauliflower, Potato, Chilli, Sugar beet, Paddy, Tomato, Garlic, Turmeric, Broccoli, etc. vermicast use of 1000-1200 kgs per acre has been recommended to substitute half the dose of chemical fertilizers. The use of farmyard manure has to be continued at previous levels.
- In high nutrients requiring crops such as Radish, Jute, Sugarcane, Gherkin, Banana, etc. vermicast use has generally been recommended at the rate of 1000-1500 kgs per acre. It has been observed that alongwith vermicast, full dose of farmyard manure and the balance being provided through chemical fertilizers gives optimum yields.
- In horticulture crops especially fruit orchards, vermicast use of 1-20 kgs per plant is being recommended depending on the stage of growth.
In majority of the cases, it has been found that the recommended doses of chemical fertilizers separately cover macro- and micro-nutrients requirements. In case of vermicast use of chemical fertilizers to meet micro-nutrients requirements can be completely eliminated.
Vermicast use, always with hesitation has been an advantage in its promotion. It automatically gets used under part substitution approach to whatever a farmer has been generally using in the past.
Unlike chemical fertilizers which are applied at certain stages of crops, vermicast can be used at any stage of crops. As compared to one single dose, split doses have been found to give better results. Beneficial effects of vermicast use have been observed in many subsequent crops.
The recommendation for vermicast application based on laboratory test can be provided on demand.
PHOSPHATE DEFICIENCY -- A CRISIS WE MUST RESOLVE!
During the 1970s the world looked askance at its sudden energy crisis, triggered prematurely by the united action of the Arab oil sheiks.
But now we have a new crisis that has gone largely unnoticed, and yet it is one that could cripple European and world agriculture almost as effectively as the oil crisis itself. You might wonder whether that is even possible. Well, it is, and the first stiff breezes of this ill-wind have already begun to blow!
During the oil crisis, Europe's major suppliers of North African rock-phosphate quietly and, almost without Western press comment, calmly trebled the price of their raw product!
Morocco and Tunisia, like their oil-sheik colleagues, suddenly realized that their non-renewable source of income will one day be exhausted. Therefore they intended to cash in on the profits while supplies lasted. This is not to imply, however, that deposits are almost worked out now. They aren't YET, but the future is strictly limited.
The 'P' of 'NPK'
In nutritional terms, the greatest limiting factors to increasing world food production are firstly nitrogen, and secondly phosphorus. These are THE two most important macro-nutrients required for plant growth (along with potassium). They form the 'N' and 'P' of the 'NPK' trio, familiar to most farmers.
And yet agriculture is suddenly threatened by diminishing reserves of both these essential elements. Industrially synthesized NITROGEN is in relatively short supply as a direct result of the energy crisis, and PHOSPHATE has become recognized as another finite, non-renewable resource which MUST now be conserved. Consequently, prices of these raw materials have escalated!
In such a predicament, many farmers feel they have no alternative but to pay 'through the nose' for fertilizers their crops and soil so badly need. And yet there must be an alternative -- YEHOVAH God surely did not create an environment for man dependent upon excavation and the international transportation of underground mineral deposits.
During the past year, this work has been researching in depth, the problem of phosphate availability -- or rather, the lack of it in most soils around the world -- to try to discover:
1. Why soil becomes phosphate deficient, and
2. A solution to the problem. Our research has borne fruit -- fruit which we would like to share with you in this issue of OUR LIVING ENVIRONMENT. Depth of subject demands slightly more technical language than we normally present, but we hope its vital importance will help you stay with it.
A Problem of Availability
We have already mentioned the importance of phosphorus in agriculture, and that phosphorus deficiency presents mankind with one of the biggest obstacles to increasing world food production.
In fact, vast areas of intensively-managed agricultural land are now known to be severely deficient in availability of this element. Sir Arnold Theiler whose work on phosphate during the 1920's is now classic, found that throughout Southern Africa the country as a whole was deficient in available phosphate. Since Theiler's time, his findings have been verified by basic research. Equally low levels of available soil phosphate now exist in major agricultural regions on all five continents.
Paradoxically, few agricultural soils are deficient in actual, or total phosphorus present. Most of them contain sufficient reserves of phosphorus to support plant growth if such reserves were made available in forms which plants can assimilate. It would therefore appear that the problem is not one of PRESENCE but AVAILABILITY -- at any one time most of the phosphorus present consists of non water-soluble forms and so it is not readily accessible to plant roots.
One writer mentions:
"With regard to phosphoric acid, the mineral apatite, the ultimate source of phosphorus in nature, is almost equally abundant in all varieties of igneous rocks, and phosphates are rarely deficient in soils derived from them ..." (Agricultural Geology, by R. H. Rastall, p. 35, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1922).
He continues:
"Soils derived from igneous rocks on the whole tend to be rich in potash and phosphoric acid, although these substances may not always be present in an available form in large quantity" (Ibid).
Since sedimentary formations have their origin in the igneous rocks, the obvious question then arises -- why is this element not readily available in most soils?
Pizer explains:
"It is commonly accepted that plant roots remove monovalent H2PO4 - ions from soils and make little use of HPO42- and PO43-. The main sources of H2PO4- are attached to Ca [calcium], Al [aluminum] and Fe [iron] on CLAY MINERALS and ORGANIC MATTER, (this is why all fertile soils contain both clay particles and organic matter) ... the release of H2PO4 depends on equilibria between a number of phases which are influenced by moisture content, Ph [soil acidity] soluble salts, changes in soil structure and biological activity" (Soil Phosphorus, Technical Bulletin No. 13, M.A.F.F., 1965, p. 147, by N. H. Pizer). (Emphasis ours throughout.)
Organic Matter and Soil Phosphorus
Amazing as it may seem, the answer to this seemingly complex problem is perhaps far more simple than we might at first think. Joffe gives an indication of the simplicity of the solution in describing the phosphorus and sulphur limitations in Chernozem soils:
"The relatively high Ca [calcium] and N [nitrogen] contents of the A horizon [upper soil layer] are responsible for the high P [phosphorus] content in this layer. It is THE PROTEINS OF THE ORGANIC MATTER that furnish the key. As the organic-phosphorus compounds are mineralized, the P released ties up primarily with the Ca.
"The accumulated organic matter in the A horizon [upper soil layer] retains appreciable quantities of S [sulphur]. Its RAPID CIRCULATION through drying plants and precipitation keeps up the supply in the surface layer in spite of the ease of leaching of sulphates. Of course large quantities of S [sulphur] in the A horizon persist in the form of organic complexes" (Pedology, by Jacob S. Joffe, p. 292, 2nd Ed., 1949, Pedology Publications).
Notice that it is the ORGANIC MATTER that is the effective source of phosphorus. Barrett also mentions that phosphorus levels are higher in the surface soil layers than in the subsoil, and that there is often a close relationship between phosphorus levels and the amount of organic matter present (Harnessing the Earthworm, by Thomas J. Barrett, p. 49, 1947, Bruce Humphries Inc.).
It is well known that dead plants and animals can return appreciable quantities of phosphorus to the soil -- phosphorus which has been slowly but steadily accumulating over a period of time but such phosphorus is basically returned in organic form and is therefore not readily available for further plant growth.
It must first be broken down by ANIMAL forms before it can be re-used for plant growth -- thus completing one of the great ecological cycles:
These animal forms are many and varied, but two of the most important and obvious are livestock -- which recycle LIVING plant nutrients and earthworms -- which recirculate nutrients from DEAD organic material. The more rapid the circulation of nutrients, the more stable the system -- the less is the likelihood of depleting fertility and the greater are the opportunities for building up nutrient reserves. This rapid recycling of nutrients is one of the chief benefits of a live-stock-based agriculture.
Earthworms and Phosphorus
Barrett also brings out some remarkable information regarding the role of earthworms in making phosphorus available for plant growth.
He found that the phosphorus content of soil in boxes containing worms increased 10% over those which had no worms. He also analysed earthworm castings to discover that they contained FIVE times as much available nitrogen, SEVEN times as much phosphorus, ELEVEN times as much potassium and THREE times as much magnesium as the parent soil.
Indirectly, the origin of these extra available nutrients is probably soil organic matter, on which the earthworms feed, because Barrett also noticed that castings contain larger bacterial populations than unworked soil. And we are well aware that soil microbes multiply on organic matter. The earthworm is therefore undoubtedly one of the major organisms directly responsible for making soil nutrients available and forms one of the vital links in the balance of nature.
In the Nile valley, fertility is legendary and it is reported that earthworm castings may amount to some 200 tons per acre per year. In most other areas the earthworm population is much smaller and the weight of castings deposited each year seldom exceeds 10 to 20 tons per acre. On many farms these castings would amount to less than one or two tons per acre per year!
Since worms appear to depend heavily on organic matter, we cannot expect to boost our earthworm population and solve major mineral deficiency problems organically, without massive returns of plant residues. There is an old truism which states that "a chain is as strong as its weakest link". And in the agricultural chain of life, the weakest link has been the return of organic residues back to the soil.
Phosphorus and Sulphur Relationships
Research on this issue of phosphate deficiency took us into many areas of mineral nutrition, one of which was sulphur. It might be worthwhile to mention here several facts we found out from other researchers about this element, since both sulphur and phosphorus have considerable bearing on the growth of legumes:
1. There is evidence that phosphate deficiencies may be accompanied by sulphur complications, and recent work in New Zealand has indicated that SULPHUR may be equally important with PHOSPHORUS in the growth and development of pasture legumes. Ludecke found that the amount of sulphur required by legumes is between one-tenth and one-fifteenth the amount of nitrogen fixed. Thus, if we consider a figure of 250 lbs. of nitrogen fixed per acre per year, somewhere between 17 and 25 lbs. of sulphur will be required of that soil.
2. But although this amount of sulphur may be sufficient to produce maximum plant growth, Anderson (1952) reports that more sulphur is required to maintain maximum protein content. Apparently maximum growth can be achieved without a comparable achievement in protein levels! (i.e. yields are not necessarily synonymous with quality values.) Saalbach (1961) also studied the influence of S on plant yield and protein quality in various forage crops, and found a positive correlation between S fertilization and protein quality.
3. Pot experiments by Needham and Hauge (1952) showed that a pronounced S deficiency in Lucerne caused a pronounced shortage of vitamins in the plant.
All of these facts essentially concern characteristics of QUALITY in plant composition. We mention them here because they bring us back once again to the all-important factor of organic matter in soil, which, as we have seen, is not only a major source of phosphorus but also of sulphur.
4. Barrow ( 1962), Williams and Steinbergs (1958) and other researchers confirm Joffe's previous statement that there are always appreciable quantities of S present in organic matter and that organic residues are the major source of sulphur for plants.
5. Lastly, Freney and Spencer (1960) report that in general, soils mineralize more sulphur in the presence of growing plants than in their absence. They suggest this may be due to the "rhizosphere [root zone] effect" brought about by the secretion of amino acids and sugars and the subsequent increase in micro-organism activity.
Micro-organisms and Soil Nutrients
The bacterium Thiobacillus thio-oxidans, which is widespread in acid soils, is one of the most outstanding organisms associated with the transformation of sulphur. It can oxidize sulphur and sulfides to sulphates, and starting from mineral salts can produce 10% H2SO4 (Sulfuric acid).
Waksman and Starkey have shown that it can produce H2SO4 in the soil -- an ability which may be significant in the transformation of insoluble rock phosphate to more soluble forms.
Keruran presents a spectacular theory that the whole genus of Thiobacilli play an important role in other aspects of sulphur and phosphorus nutrition. He presents evidence aiming to show that they are capable of TRANSMUTING oxygen to sulphur -- not a straightforward chemical change, but a NUCLEAR transformation. He also suggests that there is a probable link (via transmutation) between sulphur and phosphorus and a possible link between sulphur and magnesium (Biological Transmutations, 1972).
Very little is currently known about nutrient inter-relationships. They are certainly exceedingly complex. But this new evidence for transmutation -- also supported by Branfield, further complicates the issue and if scientifically sound, puts the whole concept of mineral formation and availability in a new light.
No wonder Burges comments:
"Availability of many of the plant nutrients in the soil is markedly affected by the microorganisms, but the problems associated with the changes involved are exceedingly complex" (Micro-organisms in the Soil, by Alan Burges, 1958, p. 147). Following the discovery of the importance of the Thiobacilli in sulphur availability and the probable relationship between sulphur and phosphorus, we then looked into whether one particular group of micro-organisms was principally responsible for making phosphate available.
From the limited amount of material available (mostly Russian), we found no such direct correlation. Zimenko (1966) investigated most of the major micro-organic forms of life except for algae -- which have similar nutrient requirements to multicellular plants and protozoa -- which mainly feed on bacteria. From his results, there might be a possible correlation in certain soils between phosphate availability and populations of actinomycetes and fungi, but it is difficult to assess.
Burges mentions that one type of fungi (Basidiomycete) traps phosphate in the lower layers of litter on the forest floor. And there is some indication that other fungi (mycorrhizal) in certain mutually beneficial (symbiotic) associations with tree roots, supply phosphate to some trees.
Predominance of Chicory?
Our initial thoughts on the solution to phosphate deficiency ran on somewhat similar lines to Coccanouer's, although they were complemented by the material Branfield and Kervran presented -- i.e. that the answer lay in utilizing hitherto unused crops in the rotation to supply the missing minerals.
For example, Branfield shows that plants can produce their own magnesium when grown in culture mediums in which none is available.
Similarly, Kervran points out that when a lawn is lacking in calcium -- daisies appear. When they die, they decompose leaving calcium behind for other species to take up, thus continuing the natural ecological cycles of regeneration and succession -- about which we know so pitifully little!
Likewise, we wondered if there could be a plant, or a number of plants with exceptional ability for making phosphate available. Another link in the ecological chain that has perhaps been overlooked and which man could utilize to great advantage.
Research showed several aquatic plants such as duckweed (Lemony tres.) and pondweed (Oldie canadensis) to be comparatively high in phosphate -- although this could have been due to unreasonably high levels of phosphate in the surface waters where they were growing.
Upon considering the various species in our own pastures, we were reminded of the outstanding success achieved in the seeding of chicory. This plant is well known for its value as a source of phosphate in animal nutrition, but its performance was especially interesting to us. Over many years, our soils have traditionally and consistently tested deficient in available phosphate. Even repeated dressings of natural rock phosphate materials have effected only temporary improvements in availability of this agriculturally important mineral.
In spite of what one might describe as a chronic lack of available phosphate, the chicory plant positively flourished in our deficient environment. The other important observation in this connection is the fact that our sheep and cattle have readily devoured this species, showing an outstanding preference for it.
These observations would seem to support the idea that chicory is effective in bringing phosphate to the surface, even in soils that appear to be deficient in the mineral. At the same time, the grazing animals' sharp preferences lend weight to the belief that unhindered, they have the instinctive ability to select for themselves a minerally balanced diet. Measuring their natural preferences against the poor phosphate performance of our soils, seems to indicate that they are seeking their phosphate needs through this plant species.
As our results appear to confirm other's findings, we are more than ever inclined to the view that more research would reveal a capacity in other plants to help balance mineral availability in soils that need it.
Optimum Levels of Soil Organic Matter
We have already mentioned that organic matter contains considerable reserves of sulphur and phosphorus. Whilst the micro-organisms seem more ready to make sulphur available for plant growth, it is the earthworm population that does the main job as far as phosphate availability is concerned.
The incredible fertility achieved in the Nile valley was only possible through the vast quantities of fertile silt -- containing approx. 55% organic matter in finely divided form, deposited annually by the river. This was washed down from the Ethiopian highlands and provided virtually limitless food for the teeming worm life.
If we are ever to achieve any comparable fertility, we will obviously have to make huge 'investments' in our bank of soil reserves. Until we have attained optimum levels of soil organic matter we can only expect to reap mediocre crops and breed a pitifully diminutive population of earthworms. Once we have achieved such optimum levels we will be obliged to MAINTAIN them with REGULAR returns of organic matter -- just as the Nile does each year.
Here, it would appear is the ultimate pay-off for every man and every generation willing to adopt the GIVE philosophy, in place of our natural human desire to GET and GET while we can -- regardless of the consequences!
Are we beginning to see here one of the reasons why YEHOVAH God has allocated ONE THOUSAND YEARS in His plan for man to rebuild this earth to Garden of Eden specifications?
What we are prone to forget is that most agricultural soils have been severely depleted of their natural fertility by decades or centuries of wrong methods. They have been cropped intensively with little respite and very little in the way of organic returns. We have overloaded delicate systems with demands that have been far too great, and we are now paying the penalties -- penalties which cannot be eradicated overnight.
Gordon Rattray Taylor in his famous Doomsday Book cited the sulphur and phosphorus cycles specifically in this regard. Notice his warning.
"Any feedback mechanism can be swamped by too big an input. The thermostat which regulates room temperature cannot maintain the temperature if you open all the windows on any icy day, or keep you cool if the house catches on fire.
"And what may be more important, these mechanisms respond very slowly: so even if they can absorb the effects of human activity, they may take centuries to do so, and in the meantime conditions may be adverse for life. Man has begun to intrude on this beautifully balanced mechanism [in context -- the nitrogen cycle], as well as on the cycles which regulate the turnover of carbon, SULPHUR, PHOSPHORUS, carbon dioxide, and other substances. No one knows how much overload they can tolerate" (p. 89).
Apparently the overload in the case of phosphorus has already been exceeded! Our land has been cropped far too intensively and the phosphorus taken off merely ends up in the sea. Each year in the U.K. more than 172,000 tons of phosphorus and 123,000 tons of potassium are flushed out into the rivers and coasts and the country hopes to make up for this loss with imports of North African rock phosphate and potash from the Dead Sea totalling 700,000 tons!!
Results of Soil Tests
On an experimental farm in England, available phosphorus was found to be higher than original levels of seven years previous. Over a six month period (January to June 1973), 153 random soil tests were taken in 10 different fields. Of these, only 8 showed low availabilities, 123 gave moderate readings of varying intensities, and the remaining 22 showed phosphate availability to be at a high level. One can only deduce that organic matter and available nutrient levels are slowly improving, but that there is still a long way to go!
We need to mention one word of caution regarding soil analyses such as the ones conducted above. Soil tests (especially of P and K) can be unreliable, misleading and highly variable. Others agree:
"There is still no foolproof method whereby the exact quantity of available phosphorus can be determined" (South African Farmer's Weekly, Sept. 13th, 1972).
But the large numbers of "moderate" availabilities obtained in the above tests seem to give a fairly reliable indication of the condition of phosphorus in the soils of the experimental farm.
Phosphorus and Soil Ph
The preceding chart indicates the general trend of phosphate availability according to Ph, compared with other soil nutrients. The more soluble a nutrient is under a particular condition of soil acidity or alkalinity, the thicker is the horizontal band representing the nutrient. Solubility in turn is directly related to the availability of the nutrient in an ionic form that is assimilable by the plant.
Notice that nearly all the nutrients shown are available in greatest quantities around a Ph of 7 -- neutral, on this scale. It is also well-known that organic matter is invaluable in stabilizing Ph. When humus is present in sufficient quantity and in every stage of decay, soil Ph is almost invariably neutral or near neutral. One notable exception is the floor of a conifer forest. The special nature of its organic content actually contributes to its acid condition.
The Haughley Organic Experiment
Lawrence D. Hills, writing in the November 1972 issue of The Ecologist mentions that:
"The Soil Association, after running a 'closed circuit' farm at Haughley for thirty years, returning all the manure and organic matter to the soil, found that the milk, eggs, meat and grain going off the farm produced a steady fall in yields" (p. 24).
He interprets this to mean that if nutrients leave the system -- regardless of how high humus levels in the soil may be, nutrient availability and consequent productivity must fall. For the "closed" system, the inference is of course that nutrient availability will inevitably diminish in the absence of replenishments from outside.
On the surface, it sounds like an open and shut case! Nutrients DO escape, even from an organic cycle, but we must remember that soil is mostly INORGANIC and therefore as long as we have soil, we have untapped mineral reserves. The alternative is that YEHOVAH God made a mistake at Creation and forgot the phosphate and other nutrient needs of mankind around the earth. This MISTAKE would force man to transport mineral deposits around the world for the purpose of food production and/or to recycle all animal and HUMAN wastes.
The FIRST presupposes that our environment must depend on considerable industrial development and highly expensive international transportation. The SECOND, while theoretically possible, does not appear to tally with the hygiene standards of the Old Testament.
If either of these be the case -- our nutritional protection would appear to be the subject of some considerable doubt, but that premise has to be rejected because, it just does not match YEHOVAH's performance in any other area!
What appears to be certain however, is that under the adopted TEN-year rotation, (3) although Haughley soil humus INCREASED by 27% in ten years -- crops took nutrients away faster than the system could replace them from internal sources! Nitrogen and potassium levels fell during this period. Phosphate levels -- in crop analysis, fell slightly and soil pH became more acidic. The rotation consisted of: 1. winter wheat, 2. root and forage, 3. barley, 4. winter beans and spring peas, 5. oats, 6. silage of oats and peas, and 7-10. four years of pasture.
But we suggest that anyone would be making a grave error to postulate from these results that a CLOSED system will not support mankind for the duration of at least seven thousand years. We feel that the Bible gives no support to the idea that the closed environmental system is inefficient.
Because soil with only 3% humus is acknowledged to be below the critical level (4) a decline in plant nutrients, following a 27% increase in humus, proves only that the closed system is doomed to lose efficiency WHEN HUMUS IS BELOW THE CRITICAL LEVEL. It in no way disproves the ability of much higher levels of humus to release inorganic minerals commensurate with increased plant production. 3% humus was quoted as a disastrously low figure in British Midland soils by the 1969 committee of enquiry headed by Sir Emerys Jones, former Chief Advisor to the British Ministry of Agriculture.
One might say it would be like claiming that a gravitational pull of 20 lbs cannot be overcome -- simply because we witness the results of a weight lifter exerting an opposing force of only 19 lbs! Likewise, one could raise the Ph of a soil from 5.5 to 6.0 and still witness a decline in its clover population. But any agriculturalist would expect the same clover plants to proliferate with a further Ph increase to 7.0, or even 6.5!
To believe otherwise concerning the function of rising levels of soil humus, is tantamount to turning thumbs down on man's future, the moment we exhaust North African and other bulk supplies of rock phosphate.
On the contrary -- we feel that the Haughley Experiment confirms the need for a rotation far more heavily weighted in favour of an animal based agriculture. And if the system is to remain "closed", it must be operated with judicious grazing at low intensity. Failing this, low humus levels will never allow plant productivity to really "take off". May we remind the non-agricultural reader that it CAN take off -- e.g. the early years of high yields of high protein grain, on the world's black-soil plains, all with a total absence of NPK fertilizers.
Other than robbing one area of the earth to supply the demands of another, there is no alternative, if man is ever to relieve his current dependence on long-term fallow.
It may then be argued that the organic approach is uneconomic. This is probably true in the short-term, but as one ecologist said -- if you accept every argument that is put forward today on the grounds of economics, you have no alternative but to conclude that it is definitely "uneconomic" for mankind to survive!
Depressing it may be, but one must therefore conclude that there is no simple way of putting prosperity in the pockets of those working the farmlands of a world that has been bleeding its soil fertility for centuries.
We just happen to be the generation living at the time of the grand pay-off. Man's survival depends on many of these men being able to hold on until a world government can change the situation.
Time Is Running Out
Temporarily, this world can go on drawing on underground phosphate reserves from Morocco, Tunisia, Florida and Nauru etc., for the immediate future -- if farmers can afford the escalating prices. But this does not alter the fact that world agriculture is headed down a blind alley, a dead-end street and one day man will be forced to do an 180° turn. We will eventually have to manage our environment so that each acre of food-producing land will not only release its own phosphate for plant production, but also a whole range of other nutrients so necessary to health in plants, animals and people.
If, as it certainly appears, soil humus levels are the only long-term solution, then the sooner we get started, the less pain we will inflict upon ourselves and the sooner we will reap some of the possible rewards.
From the material studied -- all the evidence indicates that in order to effect a lasting solution to the phosphate problem, farmers will in future have to:
1. Raise the levels of organic matter dramatically and stabilize the Ph of the soil,
2. Maintain very high levels of organic matter to encourage a stable and large earthworm population, and
3. Recycle as much nutrient outflow as possible, or reduce economic demands on our soils.
No experiment comparable to the Haughley trials has to our knowledge been carried out on high-humus (chernozem) type soil, so it is difficult to say what level of fertility is necessary before a management system based on steps ONE and TWO, could largely dispense with the necessity of step THREE. Of course, it is extremely doubtful if it would ever make sense NOT to bother recycling most annual plant nutrient production. If it were otherwise -- would we not be negating YEHOVAH's law of the more you GIVE, the more you GET?
Hope of Israel Ministries -- Taking the Lead in the Search for Truth!Monday, March 16, 2009
FOSS4SMEs Part 2: Another WebERP Exposure
Last February 7, 2009, Team MangoCloud-Mindanao spearheaded by Mr. Art Esmeralda organized another FOSS for SME's gig held at the IT Lab of the University of Immaculate Conception Bankerohan Campus. The event showcased the following:
1. F/LOSS 101 by Rogie Masangkay
2. F/LOSS and the Economy by Holden Hao
3. Pentaho - Business Intelligence by Evamay Delarosa
4. WatchTower - GIS/SMS solution to Asset Management/Monitoring System by Eric Lozarita
5. Gimp+Inkscape+Scribus - Desktop Publishing solutions by Andrew Abogado
6. Weberp Accounting Software by Lesley Acibron & Suzette Balucanag
Below are the photos taken during the event.
Above: Mr. Rogie Masangkay
Below: Mr. Holden Hao
Above: Ms. Evamay Delarosa
Below: Mr. Eric Lozarita
Above: Mr. Andrew Abogado
Below: Suzette Balucanag and Lesley Acibron
Above: Lesley Acibron, Andrew Abogado, with Mr. Art Esmeralda
1. F/LOSS 101 by Rogie Masangkay
2. F/LOSS and the Economy by Holden Hao
3. Pentaho - Business Intelligence by Evamay Delarosa
4. WatchTower - GIS/SMS solution to Asset Management/Monitoring System by Eric Lozarita
5. Gimp+Inkscape+Scribus - Desktop Publishing solutions by Andrew Abogado
6. Weberp Accounting Software by Lesley Acibron & Suzette Balucanag
Below are the photos taken during the event.
Above: Mr. Rogie Masangkay
Below: Mr. Holden Hao
Above: Ms. Evamay Delarosa
Below: Mr. Eric Lozarita
Above: Mr. Andrew Abogado
Below: Suzette Balucanag and Lesley Acibron
Above: Lesley Acibron, Andrew Abogado, with Mr. Art Esmeralda
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Basic Earthworm Biology
Earthworms are nature's clean-up crew, aiding in the production of lush, humus-rich topsoil from spent plant and animal materials. These elegantly efficient organisms have been on earth for hundreds of thousands of years longer than humankind, largely untouched by evolution due to their nearly perfect adaptation to their role in nature.
Humankind has studied and learned to appreciate the talents of the earthworm, developing systems that capitalize on the natural role it plays in recycling organic matter back into humus. We now use earthworms for the remediation of organic “waste” materials, reducing the pressure on landfills and aiding in the regeneration of our valuable top soils.
When beginning a foray into the operation of worm driven organics systems it is important to be clear on the intended goal of the project. Worm systems are typically managed for one of three reasons; waste management, production of worm biomass, and production of castings. While worms are being grown, organic materials are being processed, and castings are being generated in all worm beds, management methods will vary to some degree depending on the focus of the system.
Vermicomposting is defined as the practice of using concentrations of earthworms to convert organic materials into usable vermicompost or worm castings. These systems focus on the waste material and managing it so that it can be successfully and efficiently processed in a worm system.
Castings production systems are worm-processing beds that use feedstocks specially blended so that castings have a specific nutrient value, chemical characteristic or cross section of microorganisms. The focus of these systems is on end product value.
Vermiculture systems focus on producing the maximum level of worm biomass possible in a given space.
The Amazing Earthworm
Researchers have identified and named more than 4400 distinct species of earthworm, each with unique physical and behavioral characteristics that distinguish them one from the other. These species have been grouped into three categories, endogeic, anecic and epigeic, descriptive of the area of the natural soil environment in which they are found and defined to some degree by environmental requirements and behaviors.
Anecic species, represented by the common nightcrawler (Lumbricus terrestris), build permanent vertical burrows that extend through the upper mineral soil layer, which can be as deep as 4-6 feet. These species coat their burrows with mucous that hardens to prevent collapse of the burrow, providing them a home to which they will always return and are able to reliably identify, even when surrounded by other worm burrows. When deprived of this burrow environment anecic worms will neither breed nor grow.
Anecic worms feed in decaying organic matter and are responsible for cycling huge volumes of organic surface debris into humus.
Endogeic species build extensive, largely horizontal burrow systems through all layers of the upper mineral soil. These worms rarely come to the surface, spending their lives deep in the soil where they feed on decayed organic matter and mineral soil particles. While most people believe all worms eat soil, it is only the epigeic species that actually feed on significant volumes of soil itself.
These worm species help to incorporate mineral matter into the topsoil layer as well as aerating and mixing the soil through their movement and feeding habits.
Epigeic earthworm species, represented by the common red worm (Eisenia fetida), are found in the natural environment in the upper topsoil layer where they feed in decaying organic matter. Epigeic worms build no permanent burrows, preferring the loose topsoil layer rich in organic matter to the deeper mineral soil environment. Even in nature these worms are found in highest concentrations in the forest duff layer or in naturally occurring drifts of leaves and organic debris rather than in soil. We can duplicate the preferred environment of these worm species in bin culture, and it is largely for this reason that it is epigeic worms only that are used in vermicomposting and vermiculture systems.
Oxygen Requirements
Earthworms are oxygen-breathing animals that absorb oxygen directly through their skin. Oxygen is dissolved into mucous coating the worm's skin and the dissolved oxygen passes through the skin and the walls of capillaries lacing the skin where it is picked up by hemoglobin in the worm blood and carried throughout the body.
Moisture Requirements
Moisture is critical to the survival of all earthworm species because it is moisture within the worm's body that gives it shape, enables it to move, and aids in the worm's ability to absorb oxygen. To facilitate the absorption of oxygen the skin is very thin and permeable, meaning that the moisture within the body cavity is easily evaporated off, particularly in dry environments. The moisture range for most worm species is from 60-85%, which ensure the worm can absorb as much moisture as may be lost.
Temperature Requirements
Specific temperature requirements and tolerances vary from species to species, though the ideal range for most epigeic worm species is between roughly 60-80° F. The worm's ability to tolerate temperatures outside of ideal is highly dependant on the level of moisture in the system, with hot, dry conditions being the most lethal combination.
Nutritional Requirements
Earthworms lack teeth and sufficient digestive enzymes of their own, relying instead on microorganisms to begin to rot and soften organic matter so it can be ingested, then relying on naturally occurring bacteria and fungi in their gut to digest their food. In the process of taking in this biologically active predigested organic matter the earthworm also ingests small particles of sand and soil, which lodge in their gizzard. As the organic matter and microbial life coating it move past this gizzard they are ground against the gritty particles lodged there and fragmented into smaller pieces, making them easier for the gut organisms to digest.
Researchers have recently learned that it is not from the organic matter itself, but from the bodies of the microbial life rotting the organic matter that epigeic earthworms derive the bulk of their most vital nutrients. Once thought to be detritus (debris) feeders, we now understand that the earthworm is actually a predator of microbial life, relying on microscopic bacteria, fungi, protozoa and algae as their major sources of nutrition. Thus, anything that will support microbial activity, that is, anything that rots, is potentially suitable food for earthworms. Materials that support the greatest level of earthworm activity are those that support the greatest and most diverse populations of microbial life.
PH Requirements
As microorganisms break down organic matter it goes through a series of naturally occurring changes in pH. Because earthworms thrive in environments rich in decaying organic matter they are adapted to tolerate these pH fluctuations with little or no change in their activity levels. In nature worms are found in environments with a pH range from 4-9, with processing and reproductive rates being no different at an acidic 4 than they are at an alkaline 9. In fact, all things being otherwise equal, earthworms actually prefer an environment with a pH of 5 to 5.5, contrary to the popular belief that they prefer a neutral pH.
With a pH tolerance this wide it is highly unusual for pH to be a limiting factor in any worm system. Further, the radical and artificial adjustment of the pH through the addition of buffering agents like lime can actually have a detrimental effect on the system. The organisms present in a given environment of organic debris are there because they are suited to that environment and whatever fluctuation may naturally occur through the process of decay. When the nature of the system is suddenly and radically altered it forces many of these organisms into dormancy and sometimes kills them outright, thus reducing the availability of nutrition to the worms and potentially slowing the processing rate of the organic matter.
The addition of lime to any worm system is generally discouraged except in those extremely rare circumstances where the pH has dropped well below the worms' level of tolerance.
Ultra-Violet Light Response
All earthworms are photophobic to some degree, meaning they react negatively to bright light. The severity of the reaction depends on the species of worm, how bright the light and the level of light to which the worm is accustomed. For example, earthworms accustomed to some light exposure will react less negatively to sudden bright light than will worms accustomed to complete darkness. Some species of worm react negatively to bright light but are actually attracted by dim light.
Earthworms sense light through photoreceptive organs along their back and on the prostomium (sensitive lobe of tissue overhanging the mouth that the worm uses to probe and sense its environment).
Reproduction
Earthworms are hermaphrodites, meaning each worm possesses both male and female reproductive organs. Some earthworm species can be self fertile, meaning they can fertilize their own ova to produce young, and some species are parthenogenic, meaning fertilization of the ova by sperm is not necessary to produce young. Most earthworm species, however, require that two worms exchange sperm in order to produce young.
When worms mate they lay side by side with their heads pointed in opposite directions, making close contact along the upper segments of their bodies. They excrete a mucous that coats both worms and binds them together, preventing them from being easily pulled apart and ensuring environmental conditions like rain or dew do not interfere with the exchange of sperm.
The worms exchange sperm, storing the received seed in a pore on the skin surface just above the clitellum (the differently colored or thickened band that encircles the worm body). Once they exchange sperm, a process that may take hours, the worms move apart and eject their own ova into a pore on their skin surface near the sperm pore. They secrete a thick mucous around the clitellum, which hardens on the outside but remains sticky underneath, forming a band out of which the worm backs, drawing the band over its head. As the band passes over the pores holding sperm and ova they are picked up and held on the sticky underside. Once the worm has backed completely out of the hardened mucous band the ends close forming a cocoon with sperm and ova inside where fertilization takes place. Each worm will continue to produce cocoons until they have used all of the sperm received from their mate.
The length of time it takes for the baby worms inside the cocoon to mature and “hatch” out, and the number of young in each cocoon depend on the worm species and environmental conditions.
Contrary to popular belief, worms are a closed species, meaning they can produce viable young only with sperm from members of their own species. They cannot be hybridized . In those rare circumstances when two worms from differing species have attempted to mate, the result was either no young being produced or, in rare circumstances, babies that were always sterile.
The worm cocoon is an incredibly tough structure, designed to protect the young inside from environmental extremes and even ingestion by other animals. Cocoons can be frozen, submerged in water for extended periods of time, dried and exposed to temperatures far in excess of what can be tolerated by adult worms without damage to the young worms inside. The cocoon can even be eaten by other animals, provided it can make it past the teeth, surviving the digestive process and passing out of the animals body in the manure! In areas of climatic extremes it's likely that the adult members of epigeic worm species do not survive, but the cocoons do, repopulating the environment when environmental conditions return to a range that can support worm activity.
Watch a flash movie of red worms mating........click here
Earthworm cocoons are easy to spot in the worm bed. They are roughly the size of a large grape seed and similarly shaped, with one end rounded and the other drawn out to a point. When first dropped from the body of the parent the cocoon is a creamy, pearlescent yellow, darkening to a cola brown as the young worms within mature and prepare to emerge.
Watch a flash movie of a red worm cocoon........click here
Watch a flash movie of a red worm Cocoon hatching........click here
Earthworm Species used in Vermiculture
While earthworm taxonomists have identified thousands of individual worm species, only six have been identified as useful in vermicomposting systems to date. These species were evaluated based on their ability to tolerate a wide range of environmental conditions and fluctuations, handling and disruption to the worm bed, and for their growth and breeding rate. Earthworm species with a short generation time, meaning a relatively short life span and rapid growth and reproductive rate, have been identified as most effective due in large part to the high concentration of juvenile worms present in their populations. Juvenile worms, like human teenagers, are voracious consumers, keeping the processing rate of the system high and ensuring an ongoing succession of young worms.
The growth and reproductive rates of each worm species listed below are the maximum identified under ideal conditions. These rates decline the further environmental conditions within the system shift from ideal.
Please note the Latin name of each earthworm species. Common names can be very misleading and often vary between different regions of the world and even regions within a country. It is very difficult to be sure which species of worm is being discussed unless the Latin name is being used. Professional worm growers should know and use the Latin names of the worms they culture.
Eisenia fetida* / Eisenia andreii
(common name, Red Worm)
There are two worm species listed here because in virtually all cultures of E. fetida, E. andreii is present. E. andreii so closely resembles E. fetida in behavior, environmental requirements, reproductive and growth rate, and appearance that the only way to distinguish between the two is through molecular scanning . There is no external difference between the two species. For all intents and purposes these worms can be considered identical. Eisenia fetida is generally the only worm mentioned because the two are so closely associated and because fetida is typically the more populous of the two.
Eisenia fetida/Eisenia andreii are the worm species identified as the most useful in vermicomposting systems and are the easiest to grow in high-density culture because they tolerate the widest range of environmental conditions and fluctuations, and handling and disruption to their environment of all species identified for this purpose. E. fetida/E. andreii are also common to virtually every landmass on earth, meaning there is no concern over importing potentially alien species to an environment where they might cause damage.
While this worm species is considered the premier worm for most applications, it is a small worm, not always suited for use as bait.
* Temperature range: Minimum; 38° F, maximum; 88° F, ideal range; 70° F-80° F.
* Reproductive rate: Approximately 10 young per worm per week under ideal conditions.
* Average number of young per cocoon: Approximately 3.
* Time to emergence from the cocoon: Approximately 30-75 days under ideal conditions.
* Time to sexual maturity: Approximately 85-150 days under ideal conditions.
*Note: The spelling ‘ fetida ' was changed a few years ago to ‘ foetida ' then subsequently changed back for reasons clear only to a few earthworm taxonomists. The different spellings do not denote different species. Information on this species can be found under both spellings, though the correct spelling is ‘ fetida '.
Eudrilus eugeniae
(common name, African nightcrawler)
This worm is a semi-tropical species, meaning it cannot easily tolerate cool temperatures and is usually grown indoors or under temperature controlled conditions in most areas of North America. E. eugeniae is a large species, well suited for use as a bait worm, but does not tolerate handling or disruption to its environment.
This species is used in some vermicomposting systems around the Mediterranean region and in some areas of eastern Asia.
* Temperature range: Minimum; 45° F, maximum; 90° F, ideal range; 70° F-80° F.
* Reproductive rate: Approximately 7 young per worm per week under ideal conditions.
* Average number of young per cocoon: Approximately 2.
* Time to emergence from the cocoon: Approximately 15-30 days under ideal conditions.
* Time to sexual maturity: Approximately 30-95 days under ideal conditions.
Amynthas gracilus
(common name, Alabama or Georgia jumper)
A. gracilus is another large worm species well suited for use as bait. It is also a tropical species with a poor tolerance for cold temperatures. This worm tolerates handling and disruption to the worm bed as well as does E. fetida and is generally considered an easy worm to culture provided appropriate temperatures can be maintained.
A. gracilus is used in a few vermicomposting systems in Malaysia and the Philippines.
* Temperature range: Minimum; 45° F, maximum; 90° F, ideal range; 70° F-80° F.
* Reproductive rate: Undetermined, though believed to be similar to E. eugeniae.
* Average number of young per cocoon: Undetermined, though believed to be similar to E. eugeniae .
* Time to emergence from the cocoon: Undetermined, though believed to be similar to E. eugeniae
* Time to sexual maturity: Undetermined, though believed to be similar to E. eugeniae
Perionyx excavatus
(common name, Indian Blue worm)
Perionyx excavatus is a beautiful worm with an iridescent blue or violet sheen to its skin clearly visible under bright light. It is a very small worm, poorly suited as fishing bait, but has an impressive growth and reproductive rate far in excess of the other species grown in bin culture.
This is another tropical worm species with a very poor tolerance for low temperatures, fluctuations in the bin environment, handling or disruption to the system. P. excavatus is often referred to as “the Traveler” for its tendency to leave the bin en masse for no apparent reason.
Due to it's temperamental nature this species is rarely used in vermicomposting systems in North America, though it is naturally occurring at low population levels in systems in contact with the soil in the southeastern US and most tropical regions of the world.
* Temperature range: Minimum; 45° F, maximum; 90° F, ideal range; 70° F-80° F.
* Reproductive rate: Approximately 19 young per worm per week under ideal conditions.
* Average number of young per cocoon: Approximately 1.
* Time to emergence from the cocoon: Approximately 15-21 days under ideal conditions.
*
Time to sexual maturity: Approximately 30-55 days under ideal conditions.
Eisenia hortensis
(European nightcrawler)
E. hortensis is a large worm species well suited for use as a bait worm. Its ideal temperature range is a bit cooler than is that of E. fetida and it requires higher moisture levels than do the other species tested for use in bin culture and vermicomposting, but the species tolerates handling and disruption to its environment, and environmental fluctuations very well.
Because this worm has a very low reproductive and growth rate, relatively speaking, it is considered the least desirable species of those tested for either bin culture or vermicomposting systems. It is used in a few vermiprocessing systems in Europe for the remediation of very wet organic materials.
* Temperature range: Minimum; 45° F, maximum; 85° F, ideal range; 55° F-65° F.
* Reproductive rate: Just under 2 young per worm per week under ideal conditions.
* Average number of young per cocoon: Approximately 1.
* Time to emergence from the cocoon: Approximately 40-125 days under ideal conditions.
* Time to sexual maturity: Approximately 55-85 days under ideal conditions.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
How to make Herbal Soap
Herbal Soap Making
What is Herbal Soap?
Herbal soap is a kind of soap mixed with natural ingredients, juice or extract and vitamins from medicinal plants.
How to Make Herbal Soap:
Utensils:
Plastic pail
Wooden ladle or bamboo stick
Glass or cup
Mortar and pestle
Cheese cloth or strainer
Knife
Chopping board
Cooking pot (preferably made of clay, enamel, stainless or glass)
Stove
Plastic molders
Akapulko and Guava Soap:
How to Prepare a Decoction:
1. Wash the leaves thoroughly and chop or cut in small pieces.
2. Measure 1 glass of chopped fresh leaves and 2 glasses of water.
3. Let it boil for 15 minutes (start timing when the water starts to boil).
4. After 15 minutes, remove from fire and strain in a cheesecloth. Set aside and let it cool.
Materials:
1 glass Caustic Soda (NaOH)
3 glasses Akapulko or Guava decoction, cooled
5 glasses cooking oil
coloring powder (optional)
Procedure:
1. Prepare the materials and the utensils needed.
2. Measure 1 glass of caustic soda and 3 glasses of Akapulko or Guava decoction and pour into a plastic pail.
3. Mix well by stirring continuously using a wooden ladle or bamboo stick. Use only one direction in mixing the mixture. Stir until the caustic soda is dissolved.
4. Pour 5 glasses cooking oil into the mixture.
5. Continue stirring until a consistency of a condensed milk is achieved.
6. Pour the soap mixture into desired plastic molders. Set aside and let it cool to harden.
7. After 4-5 hours, remove the soap from the molder.
8. Allow 30 days of ageing before packing. Label the soaps.
Indications:
Akapulko leaves - anti-fungal
Guava leaves - antiseptic for wounds
Kamias, Calamansi, Papaya, Cucumber and Radish Soaps
Materials:
1 glass Caustic Soda (NaOH)
3 glasses water
5 glasses cooking oil
1/2 glass juice or extract
Procedure:
1. Prepare the materials and the utensils needed.
2. Measure 1 glass of caustic soda and 3 glasses of water and pour into a plastic pail.
3. Mix well by stirring continuously using a wooden ladle or bamboo stick. Use only one direction in mixing the mixture. Stir until the caustic soda is dissolved.
4. Pour 5 glasses cooking oil into the mixture.
5. Continue stirring until a consistency of a condensed milk is achieved and add 1/2 glass of juice or extract.
6. Pour the soap mixture into desired plastic molders. Set aside and let it cool to harden.
7. After 4-5 hours, remove the soap from the molder.
8. Allow 30 days of ageing before packing. Label the soaps.
Indications:
Kamias - fruit extract or juice (bleaching soap)
Calamansi - fruit extract or juice (bleaching soap)
Cucumber - fruit extract or juice (moisturizer)
Papaya - extract from fresh leaves (bleaching/moisturi zer)
Radish - extract from the stem (moisturizer)
Reminder:
Caustic Soda can harm the skin upon contact. Wash immediately with vinegar or anything sour and then wash it with soap and water.
Caustic Soda is harmful to health and so, make the necessary precaution. Use mask and gloves to protect your body.
What is Herbal Soap?
Herbal soap is a kind of soap mixed with natural ingredients, juice or extract and vitamins from medicinal plants.
How to Make Herbal Soap:
Utensils:
Plastic pail
Wooden ladle or bamboo stick
Glass or cup
Mortar and pestle
Cheese cloth or strainer
Knife
Chopping board
Cooking pot (preferably made of clay, enamel, stainless or glass)
Stove
Plastic molders
Akapulko and Guava Soap:
How to Prepare a Decoction:
1. Wash the leaves thoroughly and chop or cut in small pieces.
2. Measure 1 glass of chopped fresh leaves and 2 glasses of water.
3. Let it boil for 15 minutes (start timing when the water starts to boil).
4. After 15 minutes, remove from fire and strain in a cheesecloth. Set aside and let it cool.
Materials:
1 glass Caustic Soda (NaOH)
3 glasses Akapulko or Guava decoction, cooled
5 glasses cooking oil
coloring powder (optional)
Procedure:
1. Prepare the materials and the utensils needed.
2. Measure 1 glass of caustic soda and 3 glasses of Akapulko or Guava decoction and pour into a plastic pail.
3. Mix well by stirring continuously using a wooden ladle or bamboo stick. Use only one direction in mixing the mixture. Stir until the caustic soda is dissolved.
4. Pour 5 glasses cooking oil into the mixture.
5. Continue stirring until a consistency of a condensed milk is achieved.
6. Pour the soap mixture into desired plastic molders. Set aside and let it cool to harden.
7. After 4-5 hours, remove the soap from the molder.
8. Allow 30 days of ageing before packing. Label the soaps.
Indications:
Akapulko leaves - anti-fungal
Guava leaves - antiseptic for wounds
Kamias, Calamansi, Papaya, Cucumber and Radish Soaps
Materials:
1 glass Caustic Soda (NaOH)
3 glasses water
5 glasses cooking oil
1/2 glass juice or extract
Procedure:
1. Prepare the materials and the utensils needed.
2. Measure 1 glass of caustic soda and 3 glasses of water and pour into a plastic pail.
3. Mix well by stirring continuously using a wooden ladle or bamboo stick. Use only one direction in mixing the mixture. Stir until the caustic soda is dissolved.
4. Pour 5 glasses cooking oil into the mixture.
5. Continue stirring until a consistency of a condensed milk is achieved and add 1/2 glass of juice or extract.
6. Pour the soap mixture into desired plastic molders. Set aside and let it cool to harden.
7. After 4-5 hours, remove the soap from the molder.
8. Allow 30 days of ageing before packing. Label the soaps.
Indications:
Kamias - fruit extract or juice (bleaching soap)
Calamansi - fruit extract or juice (bleaching soap)
Cucumber - fruit extract or juice (moisturizer)
Papaya - extract from fresh leaves (bleaching/moisturi zer)
Radish - extract from the stem (moisturizer)
Reminder:
Caustic Soda can harm the skin upon contact. Wash immediately with vinegar or anything sour and then wash it with soap and water.
Caustic Soda is harmful to health and so, make the necessary precaution. Use mask and gloves to protect your body.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Farming Related Websites
http://www.gov.ph/cat_agriculture/default.asp
Please follow this link above.
Please follow this link above.
Liquidware Antipasto
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Introducing the Open Source Hardware Central Bank
This blog post started with a cross-country driving trip, Zen and the Art of Open Source Hardware, and culminated with discussions during and especially after Justin's Open Source Economic Council (OSEC?). The list of people I interviewed and talked to about this is too long to list individually, so instead I'm going to throw credits to everyone who's been kind enough to help on a wiki soon. This coming weekend, Justin, Andrew, and I will be "launching" the Open Source Central Bank. This is the first in a series of blog posts describing it, and next week I'm headed up to MIT and Harvard to talk to some economists and business professors about how it will work. I'm excited!
Why does Open Source Hardware need a bank?
Because Open Source Hardware is different from Open Source Software. Software can be made with time, but hardware needs time and money. The same kind of "openness" principles from the Open Source Software "time economy" transition nicely to the Open Source Hardware-based "time economy," but they seem to get muddled in the OSHW "money economy." Need proof? Just try to answer any of these questions: who makes money from it, who funds it, why do they fund it, and who's helping to make it sustainable for the community? Open Source Hardware lacks a way for individuals to come together, make a cool project, and get something out of it - without taking a second and third mortgage on their houses!
Right now, the status quo, emerging trend for OSHW DIY'ers has been: build something, put up a bunch of money to build a few of them, if people like it, scale it up, raise money, realize you might lose all that money, charge a margin on top of it to cover your potential losses, start a small company to resell more, cross your fingers, maybe get lucky or maybe not. Setting up each little company takes an infrastructure investment like incorporation legal fees, Paypal transaction costs, and website hosting fees to name a few. For every small hardware project, there's a potential to have to pay upwards of 40-50% of the initial cost of the project again in just infrastructure fees - that's prohibitive and ridiculous for little guys like me.
I initially built the Illuminato with financial help from some friends, but mostly from a former mentor of mine who sponsored the project by helping to get scaling costs for the inventory. That worked the first time, but I've been stuck with a decision of how to fund it. If I only build 25 at a time, the cost will be around $50 apiece, which is just wrong. So I've been sitting here trying to figure out whether to take out a loan, pass the hat amongst friends, try to pitch it to a VC, or try something else? This is the OSHW "money problem" - how do you fund Open Source Hardware?
A vision for Open Source Hardware
Looking at Open Source Software, it's a thriving ecosystems of communities, projects, and contributors. There are a few companies, but they mostly offer "paid-for" services like consulting, tech support, or custom code/build-to-order functionality. I'd like the same for Open Source Hardware. I'd like the money problem to go away for small contributors like me and others. And I'd like to help guys like Chris and Mike and Mark and David and Jake build more cool stuff because it's fun.
I happen to believe that success for Open Source Hardware is not a distributed, highly-fragmented ecosystem with hundreds or thousands of individual companies, each structured around a single project. That seems wrong, and the transaction and infrastructure costs alone make that hard to stomach, let alone the time it takes to set all that up. I also don't believe that Open Source Hardware should ever be venture-backed. This is a controversial topic to some people. But speaking for myself (and quite a few others, apparently!), if I'm contributing my hard-earned time and money to projects and giving them away for the community benefit, I want to know, like Mark and Justin have taught me, that the community is reaping as close to 100% of the benefits. I don't believe in middle-men or intermediates just for the sake of it, or in speculators profiting off of my spare time. I get enough of that during my day job, so I want to eliminate that from my "spare time!"
Principles for the Open Source Hardware Bank
Justin, Andrew, and I have put together what we'd consider a beginner's set of principles for the Open Source Hardware, which the bank will operate under. Naturally, these are also on the wiki. These principles are described in terms of what we think Open Source Hardware needs to succeed:
A mechanism to:
A platform that:
People who:
What's the main issue the Bank is trying to solve?
Open Source Hardware has two main financial problems that the Open Source Bank will try to alleviate (in addition to a number of other tool-based problems, but others in the community are working on those thank goodness): "Throwaway Costs" and the "Quantity Monopoly." As if the current economy weren't bad enough already, both of these problems seriously hurt DIY'ers and potential Open Source builders who want to participate in the growing Open Source Hardware community.
Throwaway Costs - building physical hardware takes revisions. Early revisions have things wrong, like misplaced traces, wrongly sized solder pads, or just bad luck. In the OSS software world, when things go wrong, you just fix the code, hit compile again, and the only thing it really "costs" is your time finding and fixing the error. But in the OSHW hardware world, errors mean broken, non-functioning junk PCB's that cost money to make. And that means lost money. Who pays for this? Guys in college, or guys who just lost all their money in their houses can't afford to build 2, 4, or 6 revisions of hardware before it works!
The Quantity Monopoly - this is a term I'm giving to the fact that large companies, especially PCB houses and component suppliers, offer volume pricing discounts. Normally this is a good thing, but only if you're building 10,000's of finished products. In the DIY OSHW world, we're talking about building 1's to 10's to 25's at a time, and so the community gets burned every time by paying "quantity tax" to large suppliers. The has the side effect of pricing individual DIY builders out of many potential hardware developments, simply because they don't get cheap enough until you make 1,000's. It's a quantity monopoly, because there's only 1 quantity number that anyone wants to build: 100,000 of anything. This is a difficult topic, and in my interviews and conversations, I've found many people on both sides of the fence about this - some for, some against. The bottom line is: if stuff were cheaper, Chris, David, Mark, Mike, Omar, Justin, and I'd all personally be able to build and share more, so anything prohibiting this is what I'll call "bad."
The Solution: how the Bank will work
The Open Source Hardware Bank will work to eliminate the scaling and quantity pricing problem for OSHW projects by funding the build of 2x the quantity of any Open Source Hardware product. That means, if a project has found a way to find 10 potential buyers, the bank will put down the money needed to fund 10 more, for a total of 20 products. If a project has found 25 community members to buy in, the bank will fund another 25, to bring the total quantity down to 50. This should reduce the unit costs by around 10-30% of any hardware project, and in the case of the Illuminato, it'll reduce costs by almost 40%!
In return, anyone who pitches in money to the bank will get a modest and sustainable return on their investment, somewhere between 5-10%. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge amount, but given what I've learned about the "real" economy recently, 30-50% return on investment may never have really existed in the first place, let alone represented "sustainable growth." This money gets paid back and cashed out when the rest of the inventory is bought as a check that Justin, Andrew, or I write and sign personally.
So Andrew, Justin, and I will see to it that the Open Source Hardware Bank does not default, and each of us will guarantee every investment. Maybe you could call it AJMIC (instead of FDIC insured)! No one is trying to become a millionaire (without lots of hard work), a high paid investment banker (ugh), or Alan Greenspan (was he ever right about anything?). We're just trying to build a sustainable little financial institution to help Open Source Hardware DIY'ers. Consequently, we're also human and realize the limits of spare time, so no one's rushing out to build 50 projects, just 1 or 2 or 3 at a time will be perfectly fine, thank you!
The Open Source Hardware Bank is "Open Source"
The bank is funding Open Source Hardware, but it is also trying to be a step in the direction of Open Source Finance. As a result, the bank is also going to be "Open Source." It will run on a wiki, everything will be transparent, and it is open to anyone who'd like to join in any of the following roles:
Open Source Banker - these will be rotating positions, and Andrew, Justin, and I will do it first until it gets unsustainable and we need help (hint hint Mark and John)
Open Source Hardware Investor - by buying anywhere between $1,000 and $5,000 Open Source hardware T-bills
Open Source Economic Council - attending bi-monthly Open Source meetings (OSEC) in NYC and Boston to vote on what the bank will fund
If you're interested, or just think Justin, Andrew, and I are totally nuts, just send me an email! :) inthebitz at gmail... and in the meantime, every ridiculously crazy project needs a respectable logo, so here's one for the Open Source Bank:
Naturally, the text around the logo reads "Open Source Hardware" in ASCII, there's wreath of resistors representing overcoming resistance (buh dump chhhhh), and a course a fancy set of circuitry in the middle, and a hexadecimal base 16 set of stars around the center...
Here goes nothing!!!
Why does Open Source Hardware need a bank?
Because Open Source Hardware is different from Open Source Software. Software can be made with time, but hardware needs time and money. The same kind of "openness" principles from the Open Source Software "time economy" transition nicely to the Open Source Hardware-based "time economy," but they seem to get muddled in the OSHW "money economy." Need proof? Just try to answer any of these questions: who makes money from it, who funds it, why do they fund it, and who's helping to make it sustainable for the community? Open Source Hardware lacks a way for individuals to come together, make a cool project, and get something out of it - without taking a second and third mortgage on their houses!
Right now, the status quo, emerging trend for OSHW DIY'ers has been: build something, put up a bunch of money to build a few of them, if people like it, scale it up, raise money, realize you might lose all that money, charge a margin on top of it to cover your potential losses, start a small company to resell more, cross your fingers, maybe get lucky or maybe not. Setting up each little company takes an infrastructure investment like incorporation legal fees, Paypal transaction costs, and website hosting fees to name a few. For every small hardware project, there's a potential to have to pay upwards of 40-50% of the initial cost of the project again in just infrastructure fees - that's prohibitive and ridiculous for little guys like me.
I initially built the Illuminato with financial help from some friends, but mostly from a former mentor of mine who sponsored the project by helping to get scaling costs for the inventory. That worked the first time, but I've been stuck with a decision of how to fund it. If I only build 25 at a time, the cost will be around $50 apiece, which is just wrong. So I've been sitting here trying to figure out whether to take out a loan, pass the hat amongst friends, try to pitch it to a VC, or try something else? This is the OSHW "money problem" - how do you fund Open Source Hardware?
A vision for Open Source Hardware
Looking at Open Source Software, it's a thriving ecosystems of communities, projects, and contributors. There are a few companies, but they mostly offer "paid-for" services like consulting, tech support, or custom code/build-to-order functionality. I'd like the same for Open Source Hardware. I'd like the money problem to go away for small contributors like me and others. And I'd like to help guys like Chris and Mike and Mark and David and Jake build more cool stuff because it's fun.
I happen to believe that success for Open Source Hardware is not a distributed, highly-fragmented ecosystem with hundreds or thousands of individual companies, each structured around a single project. That seems wrong, and the transaction and infrastructure costs alone make that hard to stomach, let alone the time it takes to set all that up. I also don't believe that Open Source Hardware should ever be venture-backed. This is a controversial topic to some people. But speaking for myself (and quite a few others, apparently!), if I'm contributing my hard-earned time and money to projects and giving them away for the community benefit, I want to know, like Mark and Justin have taught me, that the community is reaping as close to 100% of the benefits. I don't believe in middle-men or intermediates just for the sake of it, or in speculators profiting off of my spare time. I get enough of that during my day job, so I want to eliminate that from my "spare time!"
Principles for the Open Source Hardware Bank
Justin, Andrew, and I have put together what we'd consider a beginner's set of principles for the Open Source Hardware, which the bank will operate under. Naturally, these are also on the wiki. These principles are described in terms of what we think Open Source Hardware needs to succeed:
A mechanism to:
- Reduce margins and share costs for the community
- Minimize the risk and opportunity cost of unsold inventory
- Provide incentives for Open Source projects to move to production without risks
- Allow the building and distribution of low-quantity, non-scalable products (e.g. niche applications that are potentially non-VC fundable, since "bad business idea" isn't the same as "bad hardware idea")
- Give rewards and profits back as close as possible to those who contributed
A platform that:
- Minimizes economic transaction costs to high-paid non-laborer economic types
- Reduces barriers to contribution
- Rewards innovation and encourages new ideas
- Encourages project-level (not necessarily company-level) competition
People who:
- Participate because they are getting as much or more out as they put in
- Do it not just to make money and profit off of others for free
- Have rare, valuable skills who volunteer their talents for recognition or fun
- Are willing to build a more sustainable hardware innovation system
- Are willing to teach others for the gratification of helping others learn new skills
What's the main issue the Bank is trying to solve?
Open Source Hardware has two main financial problems that the Open Source Bank will try to alleviate (in addition to a number of other tool-based problems, but others in the community are working on those thank goodness): "Throwaway Costs" and the "Quantity Monopoly." As if the current economy weren't bad enough already, both of these problems seriously hurt DIY'ers and potential Open Source builders who want to participate in the growing Open Source Hardware community.
Throwaway Costs - building physical hardware takes revisions. Early revisions have things wrong, like misplaced traces, wrongly sized solder pads, or just bad luck. In the OSS software world, when things go wrong, you just fix the code, hit compile again, and the only thing it really "costs" is your time finding and fixing the error. But in the OSHW hardware world, errors mean broken, non-functioning junk PCB's that cost money to make. And that means lost money. Who pays for this? Guys in college, or guys who just lost all their money in their houses can't afford to build 2, 4, or 6 revisions of hardware before it works!
The Quantity Monopoly - this is a term I'm giving to the fact that large companies, especially PCB houses and component suppliers, offer volume pricing discounts. Normally this is a good thing, but only if you're building 10,000's of finished products. In the DIY OSHW world, we're talking about building 1's to 10's to 25's at a time, and so the community gets burned every time by paying "quantity tax" to large suppliers. The has the side effect of pricing individual DIY builders out of many potential hardware developments, simply because they don't get cheap enough until you make 1,000's. It's a quantity monopoly, because there's only 1 quantity number that anyone wants to build: 100,000 of anything. This is a difficult topic, and in my interviews and conversations, I've found many people on both sides of the fence about this - some for, some against. The bottom line is: if stuff were cheaper, Chris, David, Mark, Mike, Omar, Justin, and I'd all personally be able to build and share more, so anything prohibiting this is what I'll call "bad."
The Solution: how the Bank will work
The Open Source Hardware Bank will work to eliminate the scaling and quantity pricing problem for OSHW projects by funding the build of 2x the quantity of any Open Source Hardware product. That means, if a project has found a way to find 10 potential buyers, the bank will put down the money needed to fund 10 more, for a total of 20 products. If a project has found 25 community members to buy in, the bank will fund another 25, to bring the total quantity down to 50. This should reduce the unit costs by around 10-30% of any hardware project, and in the case of the Illuminato, it'll reduce costs by almost 40%!
In return, anyone who pitches in money to the bank will get a modest and sustainable return on their investment, somewhere between 5-10%. Normally, this wouldn't be a huge amount, but given what I've learned about the "real" economy recently, 30-50% return on investment may never have really existed in the first place, let alone represented "sustainable growth." This money gets paid back and cashed out when the rest of the inventory is bought as a check that Justin, Andrew, or I write and sign personally.
So Andrew, Justin, and I will see to it that the Open Source Hardware Bank does not default, and each of us will guarantee every investment. Maybe you could call it AJMIC (instead of FDIC insured)! No one is trying to become a millionaire (without lots of hard work), a high paid investment banker (ugh), or Alan Greenspan (was he ever right about anything?). We're just trying to build a sustainable little financial institution to help Open Source Hardware DIY'ers. Consequently, we're also human and realize the limits of spare time, so no one's rushing out to build 50 projects, just 1 or 2 or 3 at a time will be perfectly fine, thank you!
The Open Source Hardware Bank is "Open Source"
The bank is funding Open Source Hardware, but it is also trying to be a step in the direction of Open Source Finance. As a result, the bank is also going to be "Open Source." It will run on a wiki, everything will be transparent, and it is open to anyone who'd like to join in any of the following roles:
Open Source Banker - these will be rotating positions, and Andrew, Justin, and I will do it first until it gets unsustainable and we need help (hint hint Mark and John)
Open Source Hardware Investor - by buying anywhere between $1,000 and $5,000 Open Source hardware T-bills
Open Source Economic Council - attending bi-monthly Open Source meetings (OSEC) in NYC and Boston to vote on what the bank will fund
If you're interested, or just think Justin, Andrew, and I are totally nuts, just send me an email! :) inthebitz at gmail... and in the meantime, every ridiculously crazy project needs a respectable logo, so here's one for the Open Source Bank:
Naturally, the text around the logo reads "Open Source Hardware" in ASCII, there's wreath of resistors representing overcoming resistance (buh dump chhhhh), and a course a fancy set of circuitry in the middle, and a hexadecimal base 16 set of stars around the center...
Here goes nothing!!!
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Benefits of Malungay or kalugay in bicol.
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1. What is kalunggay or Moringa oleifera? Moringa oleifera Lam is the most widely cultivated species of the monogeneric family Moringaceae (order Brassicales), that includes 13 species of trees and shrubs distributed in sub-Himalayan ranges of India, Sri Lanka, North Eastern and South Western Africa, Madagascar and Arabia. Today it has become naturalized in many locations in the tropics and is widely cultivated in Africa, Ceylon, Thailand, Burma, Singapore, West Indies, Sri Lanka, India, Mexico, Malabar, Malaysia and the Philippines (Fahey, 2005). Moringa oleifera is considered one of the world’s most useful trees, as almost every part of the tree can be used for food, or has some other beneficial property. In the tropics it is used as foliage for livestock. It is an exceptionally nutritious vegetable tree with a variety of potential uses. The Moringa oleifera plants is absolutely power-packed with nutrients and minerals, including Calcium, Chloride, Chromium, Copper, Flourine, Iron, Manganese, Magnesium, Molybdenum, Phosphorus, Potassium, Osidum, Selenium, Sulfur and Zinc, Vitamins A, B, B1, B2, B3, B5, B6, B12, Folic Acid, vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin K, and vitamin E. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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2. What are the medicinal uses of Moringa? According to Fahey, J.W. (2005), the known medicinal uses/effects of all the parts of Moringa tree are: Anti-Bacterial • Infection • Urinary Tract Infection • Epstein-Bar Virus (EBV) • Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV-1) • HIV AIDS • Helminthes • Trypanosomes • Bronchitis • External sores/Ulcers • Fever • Hepatic • Anti-Tumor • Prostate • Radio Protective • Anti-Anemic • Anti-Hypertensive • Diabetes/Hypogclycemia • Diuretic • Hypocholestemia • Thyroid • Hepatorenal • Colitis • Diarrhea • Dysentry • Ulcer/Gastritis • Rheumatism • Arthritis • Headache • Antioxidant • Carotenoids • Energy • Iron Deficiency • Protein, Vitamin/Mineral Deficiency • Lactation Enhancer • Antiseptic • Catarrh • Lactation • Scurvy and Tonic • Dental Caries/Toothache • Common cold • Snakebite • Scorpion bite • Digestive • Epilepsy • Hysteria • Antinutrietional factors • Abortifacient • Aphrodisiac • Birth control • Asthma • Cardiotonic • Flatulence • Anti-spasmodic • Rubefacient • Vesicant • Gout • Hepatamegaly • Low back/Kidney pain • Splenomegaly • Syphilis • Typhoid • Earache • Throat infection • Anthelmintic • Skin cancer • Joint pain • Warts • Goitrogen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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3. What are the nutritional values of Moringa leaves? Nutritional analyses indicate that Moringa leaves contain a wealth of essential, disease-preventing nutrients. They even contain all of the essential amino acids, which is unusual for a plant source. Since the dried/powdered leaves are concentrated, they contain higher amounts of many of these nutrients, except vitamin C. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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4. How is moringa compared to common foods? The following figures show a comparison of the nutritional content of fresh Moringa leaves and dried Moringa leaves compared to common foods. All values are per 100 grams of edible portion. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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5. Do Moringa leaves have any negative side effects? Moringa leaves have not been found to be toxic. Very extensive health and safety studies conducted at the Noguchi Memorial Medical Research Centre in Ghana determined that Moringa leaf powder has no toxic elements. Absolutely no adverse side effects from even the most concentrated Moringa diet were observed. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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6. Is it safe to feed pregnant women and infants with Moringa leaf powder? In 1997-98, Alternative Action for African Development (AGADA) and Church World Service tested the ability of Moringa leaf powder to prevent or cure malnutrition in pregnant or breast-feeding women and their children in southwestern Senegal. Malnutrition was a major problem in this area, This test found the following effects to be common among subjects taking Moringa leaf powder: * Children maintained or increased their weight and improved overall health. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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