Bat guano has long been used as a natural fertilizer for crops in certain areas of Cambodia and Vietnam. As its efficacy as a fertilizer is unknown, Sothearen, Furey and Jurgens conducted the first formal testing of bat guano as an agent of enhanced crop growth. Guano was found to increase growth rates in every tested species as compared to untreated plants, and even yielded higher growth rates in several cases than the chemical fertilizer treatments. Given that macro-nutrient content of the guano was significantly less than that of the chemical fertilizer and that the plant species in this experiment are all economically valuable crops, these findings may very well be instrumental to economic and food security in Southeast Asia.
Sothearen, T., N. M. Furey and J. A. Jurgens. 2014. Effect of bat guano on the growth of five economically important plant species. Journal of Tropical Agriculture 52 (2): 169-173.
Author for correspondence: sothearenthi at yahoo dot com
The full article is available at: http://www.jtropag.in/index.php/ojs/issue/view/28
