International Journal of Recycling of Organic Waste in Agriculture (IJROWA) Use of the co-composting time extract agar to evaluate the microbial community changes during the co-composting of activated sludge and date palm waste Volume 4 (2015) Issue 2, June 2015 2024 02 01 Use of the co-composting time extract agar to evaluate the microbial community changes during the co-composting of activated sludge and date palm waste 10.1007/s40093-015-0089-z EN Mutaz Al-Alawi Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Institute of Environmental Science, Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Szent Istvan University, Pater Karoly utca 1, Godollo, 2100, Hungary 0000-0002-1262-9354 Yedir Ouhdouch Cadi Ayyad University, Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, Laboratory of Microbial Biotechnology, Agrosciences and Environment Marrakech, Morocco AgroBioSciences (AgBS), University Mohamed VI Polytechnic (UM6P), Benguerir, Morocco Mohamed Hafidi Cadi Ayyad University, Faculty of Sciences Semlalia, Laboratory of Microbial Biotechnology, Agrosciences and Environment Marrakech, Morocco AgroBioSciences (AgBS), University Mohamed VI Polytechnic (UM6P), Benguerir, Morocco Journal Article 2024 02 01 This study investigates changes in the microbiological community of two co-composting mixtures of activated sludge and date palm waste over a 6-month period. The use of the co-composting time extract medium to evaluate the abundance of cultivable indigenous microflora showed that the total microbial biomass was higher during the thermophilic phase. The mesophilic microflora was more abundant than the thermophilic bacteria, throughout the co-composting process. The proportion of mesophilic and thermophilic actinobacteria was high during the maturation phase especially for mixture A. However, thermotolerant fungal microflora increased during the thermophilic stage. Furthermore, correlating physico-chemical analysis of samples with bacterial diversity indicated that the bacterial communities underwent temperature changes. Enterococci and thermotolerant coliforms decreased significantly toward the end of the co-composting process which indicates the safety and sanitization of the end product.