Food Wastes for Enhancing Soil and Crop Productivity in Tropical Acid Soils

Excessive inorganic chemical fertilizers could cause negative environmental effects, such as soil quality degradation. In contrast, organic bio-fertilizers contain beneficial bacteria and fungi that foster soil health and crop yield, presenting a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative for crop production. This review evaluated different types of potential food waste in Brunei Darussalam for producing effective bio-fertilizers. Along with the benefits, limitations, challenges, and suggestions for bio-fertilizers (Produced from food wastes) application in Brunei Darussalam were subsequently outlined. The literature search was limited to 2009 to 2024, using relevant keywords to extract information from online databases such as Scopus, Mendeley, Science Direct, Elsevier, and Google Scholar. Additional searches were performed to retrieve grey literature. This review revealed that food wastes such as eggshell wastes, washed rice water, fruits, vegetables, and animal wastes have positive effects on improving soil and crop productivity. Bio-fertilizers provide many benefits in terms of environment, socio-economic, soil and crop productivity and disease resistance. The few limitations of bio-fertilizers are heavy metal contents, low macro-nutrient content, and large quantities required for field application. These limitations can be further researched to improve the accessibility and quality of bio-fertilizer production. Currently, the implications of organic bio-fertilizers (Produced from food wastes) in Brunei Darussalam are limited because of a lack of information and awareness on bio-fertilizer use. Thus, this comprehensive review of bio-fertilizers (made of food waste) may benefit the agricultural sector of Brunei Darussalam and beyond.