Anaerobically-Digested Brewery Wastewater as a Nutrient Solution for Substrate-Based Food Production

Urban agriculture, due to its location, can play a key role in recycling urban waste streams, promoting nutrient recycling, and increasing sustainability of food systems. This research investigated the integration of brewery wastewater treatment through anaerobic digestion with substrate-based soilless agriculture. An experiment was conducted to study the performance of three different crops (mustard greens ( Brassica juncea), basil ( Ocimum basilicum), and lettuce ( Lactuca sativa) grown with digested and raw brewery wastewater as fertilizer treatments. Mustard greens and lettuce grown in digested wastewater produced similar yields as the inorganic fertilizer control treatment, while basil had slightly lower yields. In all cases, crops in the digested wastewater treatments produced higher yields than raw wastewater or the no fertilizer control, indicating that nutrients in the brewery wastewater can be recovered for food production and diverted from typical urban waste treatment facilities. View Full-Tex