Effect of Organic Fertilizers on Early Growth of Ficus carica L. Mini-Graft

Abstract

Fig (Ficus carica L.) is cultivated as a medicinal plant in Indonesia. Plant propagation is carried out using a mini-graft system with a very small volume of planting medium. This study aims to obtain information on the initial growth of Tin plants from mini-graft seedlings, with several medium combinations of cow and worm manure (vermicompost) fertilizers. The research was conducted in the experimental field of the Faculty of Agriculture UPN “Veteran” East Java, with a two-factor treatment in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) that was repeated four times. The first factor was the treatment of 300, 600, and 900 g plant-1 of cow manure. The second factor was the treatment of 250 and 500 g plant-1 of vermicompost fertilizer. The results showed that the dose of cow manure did not significantly affect the shoots’ emergence, shoots and leaves number, the plant height, and the time of first fruit appeared. Treatment of 250 g plant-1 vermicompost fertilizer showed the best results in shoot emergence and the number of shoots and leaves. The vermicompost fertilizer treatment of 500 g plant-1 gave the best results on the parameters time of first fruit appeared. It is concluded that worm manure fertilizer (vermicompost) was effective to promote the mini-grafted seedling growth of Tin plants.

Keywords: cow manure, fig, growth, mini-graft, vermicompost