Potassium Fertilizer and Young Shoot Removal of Large White Ginger Plant Improve Rhizome Seeds Storability
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Pusat Penelitian dan Pengembangan Perkebunan
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The application of the appropriate potassium dosage is expected to enhance yield and produce high quality of rhizome seeds, hence improving its storability.Growing shoots are a strong sink. Thus, shoot pinching aims to divert the photosynthate partition of shoots to the rhizome to improve rhizome development. The purpose of the research was to evaluate the effect of K dosage and shoot pinching to improve the production and quality of rhizome seeds of large white ginger. The experiment was arranged in a split-plot design with four replications. The main plot was shoot-pinching treatments: 1) no pinching, and 2) new shoots were pinchedat 6 months after planting(MAP). The subplots were five doses of K; 0, 150 kg/ha, 300kg/ha, 450kg/ha, 600 kg/ha equivalent to 0, 3.75, 7.5, 11.25 and 15 g/plant respectively. The potassium was applied two times at 1 and 3 MAP, half dosage for each application. There was no interaction between shoot pinching and potassium dosage on the yield, physical, and biochemical quality of the rhizome. However, potassium dosage affected seed viability significantly. Potassium dosage presented a quadratic response with 7.5 g K/plant gave the best seed viability, whereas the optimum dosage for plant height was at 6.7 g K/plant. Shoot pinching at 6 MAP produced seeds with enhanced storability, up to 9 months. Furthermore, it also improved seed viability as indicated by better seed growth than no pinching treatment.Keywords: optimum dosage, seed quality, yield, Zingiber officinale
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optimum dosage; seed quality; yield; Zingiber officinale