Title: The potential benefits and implications of wastewater reuse for irrigation on the agricultural environment

Abstract:

Plethora of urban escalation owing to irrational wastewater disposal methods and practices in recent decades have resulted in severe environmental issues like degrading river quality, ground water pollution, heavy metal contamination, deterioration in soil health and nearby water reservoir quality etc. Apart from all harmful constituents, it also has essential macronutrient for soil and plants growth. The erratic nature of wastewater generation and flow makes it expensive to use for physical and chemical treatment and difficult to use for biological removal. In this view untreated wastewater utilization in agriculture is a sustainable way with multifaceted benefits of wastewater management, reduction in contamination, curtailment in use of inorganic fertilizer. Application of wastewater up to certain concentration in irrigation serves several goals such as promoting sustainable agriculture in arid and semiarid region, preserving scare water resources, and maintaining environmental quality. This could reduce the application of synthetic fertilizer drastically and benefit the farmers in the future prospects. Therefore, cautious use of wastewater can be an environmentally and economically sustainable alternative to chemical fertilizers for improving crop productivity, crop yield and at the same time, help in treating wastewater as a valuable resource.

Biography:

Dr. Rajeev Pratap Singh is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu University, India. He completed his Ph.D. at the same University. His main research interests include solid waste management, bio-composting, and green technologies. He has received several international awards, including the “Green Talent” award from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), Germany; Prosper.Net Scopus Young Scientist award, DST Young Scientist Award, etc. Dr. Singh is a member of reviewer and editorial team of several important scientific journals and has edited 5 books and 50 highly cited research and review articles on solid waste management and ecotoxicology. Dr Singh’s research works are very well cited by researchers globally (Google Scholar citation 3,136; h-index 22; and i10-index 31). Dr. Singh also received Water Advanced Research and Innovation (WARI) Fellowship from DST, Govt. of India, IUSSTF, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), and the Robert Daugherty Water for Food Institute (DWFI).