Monitoring of ammonia emissions from stored buffalo manure covered with straw and following land application

Agriculture is responsible for more than 90% of ammonia emissions in the air. To control emission levels and meet requirements of the National Emission Ceilings Directive, mitigation strategies must be implemented. This study illustrates a laboratory scale study aimed to assess how to control the ammonia emissions during and after storage phase of buffalo manure. It was examined the effect of two application of 1 cm of straw cover during the storage of liquid buffalo manure compared with manure stored without any cover, using glass vessels in a climate-controlled room. After the storage, a soil application followed, under the same laboratory condition. The comparison between the two study groups showed that the straw cover reduced ammonia emissions by 7.3% during the storage and by 43.3% after the soil application. After the storage, manure characterization showed an inferior amount of TAN for the samples covered with straw. Thus, when the same quantity of manure was applied to the soil (80 ml) it contained a different amount of the nitrogen: 0.08 g for the manure covered with straw and 0.14 g for the other sample group. The results of this study show that straw covers not only reduced ammonia emissions during the storage and the soil application, but also the nitrogen content in stored manure.