Abstract

Introduction: Every year, a great amount of manure is used in Pistachio orchards, which will be used as a valuable resource for promoting soil fertility if it is processed appropriately. This study aims to examine the use of sulfur from the Zarkooh mine to optimize the process of compost production of cow and poultry manure. Materials and Methods: Zarkooh Mine Sulfur in the amounts of 0, 200 and 300 kg per ton of cattle manure (T0, T1, and T2) and the amounts of 0 and 250 kg per ton of poultry manure (H0 and H1) were used in 3 replications as factorial in a completely randomized design. A sampling of the treatments was done for 7 weeks and factors including the temperature, EC, PH, humidity, organic matter percentage, the concentration of micro-macro nutrients, as well as the microbial population were evaluated after applying treatments. Results: In the cow and poultry manure treatments, the changing trend of the temperature, EC, C/N ratio, and all measured elements significantly differed from the control (P< 0.01). The results of processing cow and poultry manure showed that the most significant changes in the temperature were observed in treatments T2 (42 c°), T1 (36 c°), and H1 (33.3 c°) compared to the control (27 c°). During the processing of the manure, the C/N ratio and humidity significantly decreased in all treatments compared to the control (P< 0.01). Besides, salinity in the cow manure treatments using Zarkooh mine sulfur decreased from the first to the seventh weeks (P< 0.01) than that in the control; however, it increased in the poultry manure. The results showed that the microbial population in the cow and poultry manure treatments decreased significantly using Zarkooh mine sulfur compared to control (P< 0.01). Conclusions: Based on the results of the C/N ratio and the microbial population at different sampling times, it can be concluded that the best time for cow manure processing with 200 kg Zarkooh mine sulfur was in the sixth week. Besides, the best time for cow manure processing with 300 kg of Zarkooh mine sulfur was the fourth week, and the best time for processing poultry manure from the Zarkooh mine was the sixth week. Therefore, the processing time decreased for cow manure with a higher application of Zarkooh mine sulfur.