Abstract:
Rice is the staple food in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, India and many other Asian
countries and in Malaysia, nearly 0.6 billion ha of land is being used for growing rice
(Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute 2008). Rice cultivation
produces large quantities of straw waste, ranging from about 2 to 9 tons/ha globally. In
many countries including Malaysia, rice straw is generally burnt directly on the fields
causing greenhouse emissions (Badrinath et al. 2006) and can exacerbate global warming
problems. Rice straw consists mainly of cellulose and hemicelluloses encrusted in lignin,
and contain only small amounts of protein. The higher content of these cellulosic materials
in the rice straw compared to other protein-rich grains such as wheat and barley make rice
straw more resistant to microbial decomposition (Parr et al. 1992). Decomposed rice straw
is a rich source of organic material that can be utilized by the plants; particularly when the
C:N ratio is enriched by the activities of the soil bacteria, thus increasing the supply of
nutrients and maintaining soil fertility. This paper describes the decomposition of rice straw
using cellulolytic bacterial consortium (CBC) which has been isolated from a rice growing
area in Tanjung Karang Selangor
