SHREDDED PAPER AS FOOD FOR EISENIA FETIDA: CHANGES IN SOIL AND IN SEVERAL BIOLOGICAL PARAMETERS.

Earthworms of species Eisenia fetida (Savigny 1826) (red wiggler worm), are known as eaters of a large range of organic matter, being considered from this point of view real solvers of several issues regarding the wastes management. This study intended to show that paper wastes (copy paper) can be eaten by earthworms Eisenia fetida and thus this type of waste can be managed by introducing it into the diet of this earthworm species. The objectives of the study were two: 1) to determine the relationship existing between this food type and several biological parameters of this earthworm species (survival, weight, and prolificacy); 2) to establish the relation existing between this earthworm's mortality, weight and prolificacy and several soil properties (the concentration of the total nitrogen, available potassium, and available phosphorus). The experiment lasted three months and has been carried out as a laboratory (microcosmos) experiment. The results showed that copy paper represents an adequate food for earthworms Eisenia fetida (no mortality was recorded in the experimental pots as compared to controls, and the earthworm's prolificacy increased, on average with 65.16% versus control (p < 0.05). Feeding the earthworms Eisenia fetida with shredded paper is appropriate to increase the prolificacy of this species, parameter which positively is correlated with the values of pH, mobile phosphorus and mobile potassium of the soil, and to increase the concentrations of phosphorus and potassium in the soil, but this last aspect requires further investigations, because probably this is an effect on short time. The content of mobile phosphorus of soil increased with 98.56% in the soil containing earthworms fed with shredded paper versus control (soil without earthworms) (p < 0.01, p < 0.05). The parameter mobile potassium of the soil increased with 15.57% as compared with the soil with unfed earthworms (p < 0.05). In this study, feeding earthworms Eisenia fetida with shredded paper was not a way to obtain significant increases of the value of total nitrogen in soil. The body weight of the earthworms fed with shredded paper was found to be positively correlated to the content of total nitrogen of the soil, and negatively correlated to the parameters pH, mobile phosphorus, and mobile potassium. The characteristic prolificacy was found to be positively correlated to the parameters pH, mobile phosphorus, mobile potassium, and no significant negative correlations were found for this biological parameter and the soil factors. There was performed statistical processing of data using Spearman and Kendall Correlations, One Way ANOVA, and Pearson Correlation (p<0.01, p<0.05). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]