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Chicken manure is one of the most wide spread waste worldwide. One of its hazardous properties is contamination with live pathogens or pathogens' spores. Being introduced into soil for fertilization, fresh, cured or treated manure can cause soil contamination with those pathogens. Further, transmission of the pathogens through soil and plant tissues to human or animal food is possible. The objective of the present work was to reveal the level of pathogenic contamination of wheat grains cultivated on soil that was previously treated with cured chicken manure. Two types of manures M1 and M2 sampled from the large poultry farms situated in Russia were used to fertilize soil and obtain wheat grains (samples G1 and G2, respectively). Grains obtained with mineral fertilizers were used as a control (G0). Among 10 pathogenic bacterial species investigated, 6 were detected in both M1 and M2 samples - Listeria monocytogenes, Mycobacterium paratuberculosis, Enterococus spp, Campylobacter jejuni, Bacillus anthracis, Streptococcus dysgalactiae, the gene copy numbers for those bacteria revealed using RT-PCR was found to range between 2.22*104 and 1.19*108 gene copies per g manure. 5 of those species, except of C. jejuni, were also detected in both types of grains, while the gene copies number were found to be lower, thus they ranged between 1.45*10³ and 8.81*10³ copies per g grain. No bacterial pathogens were detected in G0 sample. Viral particles of bursal disease virus and avian orthoreovirus were not found either in manures nor in grains. It can be concluded that the risk of pathogenic transmission from the manures to grains exists, and that higher attention should be paid on their treatment to avoid the secondary infection of livestock and human. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chicken manure is a source of biogenic elements and therefore can be used as a nonconventional fertilizer after composting. However, chicken manure can contain different hazardous substances including antibiotic resistant bacteria and corresponding genes of antibiotic resistance that can be transmitted to human and livestock trough soils and plants even after composting. Besides chicken manure composts can contain heavy metals that not only harm soils and yields directly but also stimulate the process of antibiotic resistance genes transfer and therethrough harm soils and plant consumers indirectly. The purpose of the present study was to reveal the potential of the chicken manure biochar, the type of biochar that is not fully studied yet, as a tool to reduce the level of available heavy metals content in the chicken manure composts. For this purpose, chicken manure was composted with straw (control), and with addition of heavy metals mixture (M) as well as with addition of those with 15% chicken manure biochar (BM). Ni, Fe, Cd and Cu were added to the compost mixtures M and BM to reach concentrations of 70, 1500, 130, and 1000 mg/kg, respectively. Composting lasted for 120 days, in all three cases - C, M and BM - the thermophilic stage phase lasted from days 2 to 5, and the temperature values were 44-53 ℃. It was found that chicken manure biochar is an effective way to reduce the content of available forms of Cd, Fe and Ni at the early stages of composting and reduces the concentration of those metals by 47, 17 and 45 % on the first day, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chicken manure is one of the massively produced wastes in the agriculture, and pyrolysis may be a good way of its treatment. Biochar obtained in the process of pyrolysis may be used as soil fertilizer since it improves soil water and air balance, stabilizes pH, provides plants and soil microbiota with nutrients. In the present study, chicken manure with sawdust was pyrolyzed at 400 ⁰C (residence time 2 h), and biochar obtained was added to soil in a dose of 30 t ha-1 in a field experiment. Wheat was planted in the following experimental plots: control (C), soil and biochar (B), soil and complex mineral fertilizer containing nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium (F). Additionally, biochar was enriched with iodine in a ratio of 2% and added to soil in a dose of 30 t ha-1 (I). Wheat yield on the C field was estimated to be 17.57 centners ha-1. On the other fields it was 41, 52 and 52% higher (for the variants F, B and I, correspondingly). Metabolic activity of soil microorganisms in the variants B and I was comparable with that in the control soil, while significantly differed from control in the F variant. Iodine enrichment of biochar led to higher iodine content in soil (81%) as well as in plant biomass (56%) as compared with control. Grain quality of wheat grown with both types of biochar was higher as compared with C and F variants in terms of protein, α-amylase and gluten content. It can be concluded that biochar made of chicken manure is an alternative fertilizer that increases plant yield and quality without affecting soil microbiota, and additional enrichment of biochar with iodine leads to higher iodine content in the plants and therefore may help to provide people with this microelement in the iodine-deficit regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High concentrations of ammonium, toxic organic compounds, pathogenic microflora make chicken manure one of the most toxic agricultural wastes. The use of chicken manure in plant growing is only possible after its treatment, e.g. by means of composting or anaerobic digestion. One of alternative ways of chicken manure treatment is its pyrolysis, as a result of which pyrolysis fuel and biochar are produced. The latter can be used as nontraditional organic fertilizer. However, the properties of biochar produced from chicken manure are not studied enough. In particular, there are no sufficient data about the toxicity of biochar produced from chicken manure at different temperatures and durations of pyrolysis. In the present work the toxicity of biochars produced from chicken manure obtained from a large poultry complex situated in the Republic of Tatarstan (Russia) was evaluated using three methods of biotesting in hydrobionts (Paramecium caudatum, Ceriodaphnia affinis) and in higher plants (Hordeum vulgare). Biochars were produced at 400, 500, 600 °C peak temperatures and durations of 1, 2, 3 and 4 h. It was determined that when the temperature of pyrolysis was increased up to 600°C and the duration of it up to 3 and 4 hours, biochar toxic to P. caudatum, C. affinis and H. vulgare was produced. The pyrolysis of chicken manure at the temperature of 400°C and the duration of 2 hours, as well as at the temperature of 500°C and the duration of 3 hours leads to the production of substantially non-toxic biochar. In whole, pyrolysis helped to reduce the toxic properties of chicken manure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]