Name : Arghya Narendra DianastyaID : 5620000087Major : Agronomy, Bachelor Degree Student

Green Manure Plant in Indonesia and Recomendation

BACKGROUND :

Sustainable agriculture has become a new paradigm recently. The concept of sustainable agriculture is to use minimum input that can be dangerous to the system and environtment. Sustainable agriculture has 3 concept that has to be fullfil which are : good environtment, good economy, and good social.

Giving a chemical fertilizer has been commonly used by farmer. It has been known that using chemical fertilizer will give a negative impact to the environtment if it is used in excesive way. A new way to add nutrition for plant as well as mantaining a soil health is using green manure or cover crop. Green manure has a fuction mainly as soil and water conservation, as well as give a nutrient for crop.

Picture: Soil and Water Conservation cycle. Some crop residual can give back to the soil for soil nutrient.

Green manures may be applied directly, leaving it on the soil as mulch, or composted before application and can serve a dual purpose as a source of green manure and as a source of food. Some green manures can be used as animal feed with the resulting animal manure used as fertilizer.

GREEN MANURE IN INDONESIA :

Apparently, Indonesian Goverment, in this case on behalf of Ministry of Agriculture, still not give a rigid and precise recomendation in green manure. Green manure in indonesia, mostly still on the scale of research which provide either by government, education institure or private sector. One of the green manure that booming right now in Indonesia is Tithonia diversifolia.

Tithonia diversifolia (Syn. Mirasolia diversifolia) is commonly known as Mexican sunflower. it is annual, aggressive weed growing 2.5 m and adaptable to most soils including the dry soil (Olabode, 2007).

Picture : Tithonia diversifolia

BENEFICAL THING FROM TITHONIA DIVERSIFOLIA

1. General PropertiesMost of farmer in Indonesia use legume as a green manure or as a cover crop. Mostly

legume is used as a ccover crop to maize. But the problem is, most leguminoceae plant cannot grow in a dry land or non arable land. It becomes the advantage of using T. Diversifolia, because some of area in Indonesia has very low rain fall.

Picture : Rainfall (mm) in all area of Indonesia. Some of Area in Indonesia has very low rainfall and dry. The dark brown are the most dry and non arable area.

As a weed, Tithonia diversifolia can grow in any kind of land. Tithonia diversifolia also can propageted easily using vegetatif propagation.

2. Chemical Properties

Table: comparison of manual properties of Tithonia diversifolia and other organic matter sources

Tithonia has high nutrient content compare to animal manure and other green manure, specially in Kalium. Although some of nutrient still lower than other green and animal manure. It can be said that adding of Magnesium is needed in the soil that has lower fertility in Magnesium. This is due to lack of magnesium nutrient in Tithonia.

3. C/N Ratio Properties

Table : Chemical Properties of Tithonoa compare to other green manures

Tithonia low C/N ratio. This indicates that Tithonia is efficient for mulch because lower C/N ratio indicates a faster rate of decomposition

APPLICATION OF GREEN MANURE

There are general ways to apply green manure according to Agriculture Ministry of Indonesia. But the most common one that used by farmer in Indonesia is alley cropping such as in the picture bellow :

Picture: Alley Cropping, Indonesian Ministry Recomendation for Green Manure

Alley Cropping as shown in the picture mostly planted in slope area where the erosion normally happen. Using alleycroping and plant the green manure crop prevent the erosion.

OTHER TYPE OF GREEN MANURE COMMONLY USED IN INDONESIA

Some of farmer also get recomendation from State Agricultural Office to use the trash or litter that do not used after post harvest. Those including leave as well as the stem.

Table: kacang-kacangan means bean. biji-bijian means cereal. umbi-umbian means tuber plants. This table explaining the number of nutrient of litter of postharvesting using unit kg/ha.

other types of green manure used as a fence crop/ alley croping are :

Table : Other species that used for green manure including the nutrient content analysis.

Using green manure as alley croping sometimes is not beneficial due many space used. So the other type of green manure is cover crop. Cover crop is more suitable because can grow under the main, can mantain water content in the soil, reducing weed, and give a nutrient or fising the nutrient for plant.

Table : Cover crop that mainly used in Indonesia and research scale including the nutrient content.

Picture : Cover crop application

REFERENCES

Olabode. O.S., Ogunyemi Sola, W.B. Akanbi, 1 2 1 1G.O. Adesina and 1P.A. Babajide. 2007. Evaluation of Tithonia diversifolia (Hemsl.) A Gray for Soil Improvement. World Journal of Agricultural Sciences 3 (4): 503-507.

http://www.pioc-ciremai.page4.me/tithonia_diversifoli.html