Characteristics of watermeion peel waste composting and evaluation of maturity

Adopting natural and artificial composting treatment,watermeion peel waste composing were studied to determine the variation of maturity indexes of the composting,including physical,chemical and biological indexes,meanwhile,cabbage seed germination index(GI) was adopted to evaluate the maturity.The results indicated that: during one month's composting,the temperature had a rise followed by a drop,and lasted for more than 5 d over 55℃;the pH value first decreased and then increased;the moisture content and C/N ratio kept declining,and the C/N ratio was close to 16 after 30 d;total nitrogen and total phosphorus mainly presented a trend of rising;the germination index had experienced from decrease to increase.In natural composting,GI was significantly negatively correlated with C/N,reaching-0.977;in artificial composting,GI were significantly negatively correlated with the moisture content and C/N,reaching-0.967 and-0.933 respectively,while GI were significantly positively correlated with total phosphorus and total nitrogen,reaching 0.888 and 0.876 respectively.