Potential Environmental Impacts of Uncomposted Organic Materials, Composts and Manures

Soil health is central to organic farming and organic inputs are applied to improve it so as to get higher economic yields on sustainable basis.A lot of work has been done around the world to support this fact.But there are environmental concerns related to the use of inputs which include the losses of nutrients from the farming systems to the open ecosystems causing damage to the water bodies including underground water contamination.Gaseous nitrogen losses tend to be lower from composted than fresh organic materials.There is a need to investigate tradeoffs between different gaseous and leaching forms of pollutants following compost application.The environmental impacts of organic materials including uncomposted and composted manures applied to the soil to get higher production and productive of crops, have not been studied by many.This review paper is an attempt to summarize the same.