VermiCulture

The term vermiculture mainly refers to the scientific process of cultivating worm or artificial rearing of worms to decompose organic food wastes into a nutrient-rich material. The output of vermiculture is called vermicompost and is formed by the process in which earthworms consume the farmyard manure and roughages in addition to the wastes from farms and thereby producing it. The produced vermicompost is rich in terms of nutrients and other plant growth-promoting substances, which is capable of supplying necessary mineral nutrients to help and sustain plants growth.

Significance

1. Vermicompost is the best replacement for chemical fertilizers.
2. Vermicompost is eco-friendly as it is produced by organic waste through vermiculture.
3. Vermicompost is also a natural fertilizer.
4. Water holding capacity increases due to the organic substances used in vermicompost.
5. Improves plants growth and nutrients absorbing capacity.
6. Vermicompost contains antibiotic properties that help to regulate compost.
7. Crop yields and seed germination also improves.

Applications

• Land quality improvement: Continuous usage of pesticides or chemical fertilizers and urbanization have caused long term soil pollution and poor land quality leading to loss of topsoil, which makes the land unfit for cultivation. Earthworm inoculation unit (EIU) is a technique discovered to improve the quality of land and soil. The EIU uses two steps to achieve its goals:
  i) Cultivation: Here, earthworm cultures (starter culture) are produced by mixing up soil, earthworms and feed (organic wastes).
  ii) Soil inoculation: Starter cultures are added into the soil, where radial migration of these cultures take place. Migration depends on factors like soil quality, moisture content and organic matter availability, etc. The starter cultures are observed for ten months for their best results, and the cultures which succeed in surviving into the soil are selected for the EIU technique to improve the land quality.
• Fish feed alternative: Vermicast produces worm casting, which is used as the fish feed alternative. An excess amount of vermicast may have a bad impact on the pH of water. Hence proper care needs to be taken while adding it as an alternative feed.
• Human health care: These are also used to make certain remedial products. Two such examples are:
  i) Anticoagulants: These help people who are suffering from internal blood clots blocking blood vessels. Earthworm extracts derived from vermicast and cultivated earthworms are known to have the property to prevent blood clotting.
  ii) Antioxidants: Coelomic fluid, earthworm paste, earthworm extracts, etc. Certain fluids extracted from earthworms are known to have antioxidant activity in in-vitro conditions. The antioxidant activity can be explained by the fact that earthworm extracts bear the capacity to donate electrons to reactive species such as free radicals, which stabilizes them. This process of stabilization of reactive free radicals is considered to be responsible for the antioxidant activity of earthworms.