Effect on harvest of olive trees fertilized with sewage sludge compost

Abstract

The soil of the Mediterranean regions is impoverishing. The need of organic matter to maintain soil productivity and to fight erosion and desertization has led to the search for new material as a complement or a substitute of the traditional ones, such as harvest wastes, animal manures or peats. Organic waste produced by society contains the fundamental nutrients plants which could incorporate to soil and use in agriculture, such us to olive grove soil. In order to evaluate the agricultural use of sewage sludge compost (SSC) it has been studied the effect of SSC on three parameters of olive fruit (humidity, fat and heavy metal content). Results indicate that olives which were fertilized with SSC and SSC + Urea presented more humidity content that fertilized with urea. Heavy metals from SSC do not affect to heavy metal content in olive fruit.