gen fixing and phosphate solubilizing organisms in the digestate shows that it could be utilized as an efficient biofertilizer for crop production. The mean microbial count revealed decreasing trend for total coliform, total aerobic plate, and fungal in the digestate as against their higher values in the feedstock. However, the pres- ence of Salmonella ., Klebsiella and total coliforms in the digestate suggests that it may not be safe to apply the digestate as fertilizer without further treatment. Because of the easy loss of ammonia nitrogen to volatisation, the storage and application of the com- posted digestate should be carefully controlled to prevent negative impacts on the environment. This study recommends longer reten- tion period of 90 days (mesophilic) and shorter retention period of
30 days (thermophilic) for a better quality biofertilizer than ob- tained in this study in terms of pathogens destruction.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to Mr. Ejilude, S of the Sacred Heart Hospital, Abeokuta and Mr. Ishola, RO of the federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta for their assistance during the microbial analysis.