Publications by Colleges and Departments (MSU - Bozeman)
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Item Effectiveness of "Bokashi" compost in breakdown of pre-consumer food waste(Towne's Harvest Garden, 2013-06) Appling, Talinna; DePartee, Max; Eddy, Zachary; Rychener, PaulOur student group tested the effectiveness of the Bokashi composting approach, comparing carbon dioxide emissions during a 1 month laboratory incubation and 6-week field incubation of pre-consumer food waste at Montana State University. Preliminary results are presented suggesting there is little difference in decomposition dynamics between pre-consumer food waste alone (control), food waste amended with Bokashi, and food waste amended with soil.Item Tests of Various Compost Inoculum on Rate of Decomposition and Food Production(Montana State Univeristy, 2017-04) Rychener, PaulAs universities work to reduce their carbon footprints, campuses are composting, rather than landfilling, food waste. Unfortunately, few studies of composting outcomes exist, and there are even fewer studies analyzing compost methods. This study analyzed 3 methods for treating food waste at various concentrations. Bokashi is a compost inoculum, which uses a wheat bran-type substrate hosting “effective microorganisms”. Here we report the results from a three-phase compost study of pre-consumer food waste. Five food waste treatments included a no inoculum control, and single or 3-layer treatment, of Bokashi or soil. For Phase 1, we fermented the food waste in five-gallon buckets, measuring the headspace carbon dioxide (CO2). The CO2 to soil ratios declined from approximately 300 to approximately 100 over 4 weeks showing little variation between treatments. For Phase 2, compost decomposition completed in the field, measured by soil respiration rates, showed a large initial spike (above 150 micromoles of CO2/meter2/second), then declined over a 6-week period. For Phase 3, the compost was dried and ground, then used as a nutrient amendment to grow lettuce. Biomass increase occurred for all amended treatments, surprisingly, the largest increase (150%) was found for the food-only compost treatment. Our results suggest Bokashi and soil amendments provide little to no additional benefit compared to food-only compost. Future work should assess emissions produced through these types of composting efforts, to more quantitatively evaluate the benefits of composted food waste versus potentially avoided greenhouse gas emissions (e.g., methane and nitrous oxide) associated with landfilled food waste.Item Course organic matter distribution and soil moisture retention capacity(Montana State Univeristy, 2017-04) Ippolito, Laura; Rychener, PaulOrganic matter (OM) is a critical component of the soil in agriculture in arid or semi-arid regions in particular because of its ability to retain water in the soil. This raises the question, how does spatial distribution of OM in soil play a role in efficiency of soil moisture retention. The purpose of this experiment was to recreate three treatments, mimicking different ways OM is incorporated into the soil in an agricultural setting, along with a control which has no additional OM. To do this, the first treatment had OM fully submerged beneath the soil surface to show an increase of OM content compared to the control. The second treatment had 80% OM buried and 20% sticking out, mimicking a tilled agricultural setting. The final treatment had OM 80% buried with 20% stubble sticking out with intact root systems, to mimic summer fallow. To measure water retention, each pot was ¼ submerged under water overnight to fully saturate the soil. After saturation, the pots were weighed and then placed in a drying oven. The pots were periodically re-weighed at time 0, 0.5, 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 96, 120, 144, 168, 192, 216, 336 hours. Preliminary results show the fallow treatment had the most loss in water, followed by the unamended soil control, tilled soil treatment, and the most water retention was in the soil with an increased OM content. This study suggests that additionally completely buried OM has the highest water retention.