Study On The Characteristics Of Vinegar Residue And Its Utilization As Cultivation Substrate

Because of the extensive source and low price, vinegar residue has the potential to be used as a substrate for non-soil culture. How to effectively use vinegar residue as a substrate is a problem worthy to be discussed. In order to use vinegar residue to develop new organic cultivation substrate. This paper mainly adopts survey and sampling analysis and greenhouse cultivation experiment to study the physical and chemical properties of vinegar residues sampled from different vinegar factories in middle part of Shanxi province and the influences of the compound substrate formulated with vinegar residue, vermiculite, and limestone at different proportions on the germination rates of lettuce, rape, spinach, and cabbage. The results showed that:(1) The pH value of vinegar residue from Ninghuafu vinegar industry was 7.53 and the pH values of the other vinegar residues were between 4.56 to 6.87 from theother five vinegar factories in the middle area of Shanxi. The average pH value of the 6 vinegar residue samples was 5.72. It showed that vinegar residues from middle region of Shanxi were acid.(3) The total nitrogen contents, available phosphorus contents, and available potassium contents of the 6 vinegar residues from the six vinegar factories were from 23.4 to 33.3 g/kg, from 10.73 to 41.63 mg/ kg, and from 238.4 to 812.1g/kg respectively in the middle area of Shanxi. They were overall higher than soil total nitrogen, available phosphorus, and available potassium contents respectively. But the total potassium contents of the 6 vinegar residues were only from 4.11 to 7.33 g/kg and generally lower than that of soil. The differences between the total phosphorus contents of the 6 vinegar residues were bigger, the total phosphorus content of vinegar residue from Qingxu vinegar factory was only 0.09 g/kg and the total phosphorus content of vinegar residue from Ninghuafu vinegar industry was 2.11 g/kg. It was mainly due to the differences of raw materials from different vinegar factories.(4) Adding 10% of limestone with the particles size of about 1-3 mm into the compound substrate could neutralize the acidity of vinegar residue and increased the pH value of vinegar residue from 4.91 to 6.18 and 6.98. The pH value of the compound substrate was suitable for plant growth and development.(5) At the condition of adding 10% of limestone into the vinegar residue compound substrate, when the content of vinegar residue was lower than the content of vermiculite in the compound substrate, the water holding porosity was between 29.0% and 43.2% in the vinegar residue compound substrate, but when the content of vinegar residue was higher than the content of vermiculite in the compound substrate, the water holding porosity decreased from 23.8% to 15.6% in the vinegar residue compound substrate. This results showed that the vermiculite could increase the water retention property of vinegar residue compound substrate only when its proportion was higher than vinegar residue proportion in the vinegar residue compound substrate.(5) The results of culture experiment in greenhouse showed that when the compound substrate made with vinegar residue, vermiculite, and limestone at the proportion of 9:36:5 (V/V), the compound substrate had the properties of low bulk density, high total porosity, good air permeability and water retention, stable chemical properties, and rich nutrient element contents. It basically met the requirement of ideal cultivation substrate. When it was used to plant vegetables, the germination rate was higher. Spinach final germination rate was 66.65%, lettuce final germination rate was 87.50%, Chinese cabbage final germination rate was 82.50%, rape final germination percentage was 85.85%, and the average germination rate of the four kinds of vegetables was 80.63%.