Growth response of mahagony seedling (Swietenia macrophylla King.) to addition of coconut shell charcoal and compost on ex-sand mining site of West Java Province in Indonesia

Abstract

Riverbank is the area that is frequently being used for sand mining site. Overexploited and poorly-managed sand mining will give negative impacts to environment. To prevent and to reduce worse environmental damage, efforts to control the negative effects should be done. One of efforts that can be implemented is revegetation on the damaged land by sand mining activities, thus it needs the type of vegetation that could adapt to its environment. Mahagony (Swietenia macrophylla King.) is a plant that could adapt to ex-sand mining site environment. This research was carried out to assess the effect of adding compost manure and coconut shell charcoal for the growth of mahagony seedling (S. macrophylla) on ex-sand minig site and to identify proper dose for the coconut shell charcoal and compost manure to condition of the site. This research uses complete random design (CRD) factorial. The result of this research shows that giving  coconut shell charcoal and compost manure  does not have significant effect to all parameter viz height, diameter, total wet weight (TWW), total dry weight (TDW), and root apex ratio (RAR) of S. macrophylla. Giving compost manure partially has significant effect to high parameter, total wet weight, total dry weight, and root apex ratio of S. macrophylla with the best dose amounting to 100 g. The addition dose of coconut shell charcoal 20 g give the best response to total wet weight parameter of S. macrophylla.