AccScience Publishing / AJWEP / Volume 22 / Issue 1 / DOI: 10.36922/ajwep.7526
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ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

Saturated hydraulic conductivity of soils in the presence of vermicast: Effects of soil texture and vermicast sizes

Sajal Roy 1 ,  Rakib Hossain1 ,  Md. Akhtaruzzaman1 ,  Azizul Hakim1*
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1 Department of Soil Science, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Chittagong, Chattogram, Bangladesh
AJWEP 2025, 22(1), 115–121; https://doi.org/10.36922/ajwep.7526
Submitted: 13 December 2024 | Revised: 26 February 2025 | Accepted: 3 March 2025 | Published: 19 March 2025
© 2025 by the Author(s). This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )
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Abstract

The present experiment was conducted to observe the effects of different size fractions of vermicast on the saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ks) of loam and sandy loam soils. To set up the experiment, loam and sandy loam soils were incorporated with vermicast of different sizes as raw, 1.0 – 2.0 mm, 0.5 – 1.0 mm, and <0.5 mm, at 0, 5 t/ha, 10 t/ha, 15 t/ha, and 20 t/ha, which resulted in five different treatments for each soil type. The Ks was determined based on the principle of Darcy’s Law by maintaining a constant water head on the top of the soil column. Results indicated that sandy loam soils had significantly higher Ks than loam soil for all the application rates (p < 0.01). Irrespective of the size, the applications of vermicast at the rates of 5 t/ha, 10 t/ha, 15 t/ha, and 20 t/ha resulted in 113.67 – 196.79%, 135.47 – 442.76%, 10.0 – 150.0%, and 29.63 – 135.47% higher Ks in sandy loam soils relative to the loam soils. There were significant differences in Ks among the vermicast sizes at all the rates of incorporation for both loam and sandy loam soil treatments (p < 0.01). As the size of vermicast decreases (<0.5 mm), the Ks also decreases relative to the control, indicating the greater retention capacity and water-holding capacity of finer vermicast fractions in the soil column. At 15 t/ha and 20 t/ha, the highest relative Ks (74.42% and 88.37%) were found in loam soils with raw vermicast.

Keywords
Saturated hydraulic conductivity
Loam soils
Sandy loam soils
Vermicast sizes
Funding
None.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests.
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Asian Journal of Water, Environment and Pollution, Electronic ISSN: 1875-8568 Print ISSN: 0972-9860, Published by AccScience Publishing
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