Growth and Corm Yield of Porang (Amorphophallus muelleri Blume) grown on Alfisol soil in the glasshouse
Muchdar Soedarjo

Indonesian Legume and Tuber Crops Research Institute

Abstract

Porang (Amorphophallus muelleri Blume) is one of the agribusines crops in Indonesia and has been becoming an important income source for Indonesian farmers. Since decades ago, porang plants has been harvested from the forest as its naturas habitat, under shading environment. Due to its high economic value, more farmers has cultivated porang on open land. The present investigation was undertaken on Alfisol soil in the glasshouse, mimicking an open growing environment, in order to evaluate the effect of different bulbil size as planting material on growth and corm yield of porang. Five different sizes of porang bulbil as treatments, 1.88 g, 2= 3.21 g, 3= 4.21 g, 4= 6.45 g and 5= 9.10 g/bulbil, were laid out in completely randomized design and replicated 3 times for each treatment. All data obtained were analyzed by employing the standard deviation fron 3 replicates for each treament. Plant height and plant diameter at earlier growing stage significatly increased with an increase of bulbil size. Bigger bulbil size as planting material also caused significant improvement of shoot dry weight, corm diameter, corm thickness and fresh weight of corm yield at harvest. The highest value in all variables measured was attained by the biggest size of bulbil. The present work suggests to use bigger bulbil size as planting material in order to produce higher corm yield. The present investigation also revealed normal growth of porang under glasshouse environment. Therefore, porang plants could be cultivated on open environment without any growth retardation.

Keywords: Porang (Amorphophallus muelleri Blume), bulbil, Alfisol, open environment.

Topic: AGRICULTURAL PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY