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Recent Advances in Assessing the Maturity and Stability of Compost

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Biology of Composts

Abstract

Safe and sound use of compost in plant agronomy involves the application of mature and stable compost, which have many prospective benefits for soil improvement. Though, to be measured useful, a compost should be of high quality. It should be nontoxic to plants, humans, ecosystem, and valuable for soil. In addition, it must be exempt free from pathogenic bodies, hold only nominal quantities of external resources, have tolerable amounts of organic pollutants and free from trace elements and be satisfactorily mature and stable because immature and unstable compost has a number of problems. The present review chapter deals with the methods most commonly used for estimating maturity and stability of compost. Based on in-depth literature analysis, a case is proposed for the usage of a battery of tests owing to the fact that a solitary and stand-alone test for both compost maturity and stability has not yet been agreed upon by the researchers. In addition, we provide the guidelines and regulations for compost stability and maturity all around the world.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their gratitude to King Khalid University, Saudi Arabia for providing administrative and technical support. We are also thankful to Deanship of Scientific Research, King Khalid University. We are also grateful to Head of the Department of Biology, College of Science, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia for providing facilities to carry out current work.

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Correspondence to Sazada Siddiqui .

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Siddiqui, S. et al. (2020). Recent Advances in Assessing the Maturity and Stability of Compost. In: Meghvansi, M., Varma, A. (eds) Biology of Composts. Soil Biology, vol 58. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39173-7_9

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