Authors:
Medessou Armande BOKO,Boniface YEHOUENOU, Martin KEKE, Francois L. AMOUSSOU, Christian T. R. KONFO, Placide CLEDJO and Dominique C. K. SOHOUNHLOUE |
Abstract:
Raw poultry manure are widely used in market gardening in southern Benin, these manure can pose great
health risk if they come from infected or sick animals. Indeed, they can contaminate vegetables on which
they are spread and therefore endanger consumers' health. Hence the need to compost poultry manure
before using them in market gardening. The main objective of this study is to evaluate microbiological
quality of Lactuca sativa leaves (lettuce) cultivated with composts of poultry manure. To this end, compost
and digestate were produced with poultry manure respectively by aerobic composting and anaerobic
digestion at the Center of Waste Valorization into Renewable Energies and Agriculture (University of
Abomey-Calavi) and they were used to cultivate lettuce on the same site. Lettuce was also cultivated in the
peasant environment, in two market gardening centers located in Abomey-Calavi and Fidjrosse, using
compost produced in each of these two centers. On these three different market gardening sites, the crop
was also made with raw manure in parallel with composts produced. On each site, samples of lettuce were
collected and sent to the laboratory for the counting of total flora, Escherichia coli, coagulase-positive
Staphylococcus, Clostridium perfringens and for the detection of Salmonella spp. Use of different composts
made it possible to obtain lettuces of better microbiological quality overall. However, persistence of total
flora and Escherichia coli or Clostridium perfringensflora was observed on some lettuce plants amended
with compost or digestate, which would be related to some external factors of contamination such as quality
of irrigation water, healthiness of the cultivation soil and hygiene of the crops environment in general. |
