Interaction of Biochar and Water Hyacinth Compost Plus Arakan: A Solution for Increasing Marginal Land Fertility with Sweet Corn Test Plants

Abstract

Indonesia has quite extensive reed fields, which have great potential to be developed in the agricultural extensification program. Therefore, efforts are needed to increase the fertility of reed land by adding organic matter in the form of compost. Water hyacinth and arakan are water weeds that are found in Lake Tondano, Minahasa Regency, North Sulawesi Province. Water hyacinth and arakan are good sources of organic matter because they contain C-organic, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, which are important elements for plant growth. The use of biochar is one of the innovations that can be applied to overcome problems in agriculture. The purpose of this research is to find out the influence of the interaction between biochar and hyacinth+arakan compost on the growth and yield of sweet corn, as well as to determine the optimal dose of biochar at various doses of hyacinth+arakan compost to achieve the best corn yield. The experiment was conducted using a factorial cluster randomized design with two factors. The first factor is the dose of biochar (A), which consists of three levels: A0 (without biochar), A1 (10 tons/hectare biochar), and A2 (20 tons/hectare biochar). The second factor is the dose of hyacinth compost+arakan (B), which also consists of three levels: B0 (without hyacinth compost+Arakan), B1 (20 tons/hectare hyacinth compost+Arakan), and B2 (40 tons/hectare water hyacinth compost+Arakan). The combination of these two factors produced 9 treatments, each of which was repeated 3 times so that there were a total of 27 experimental units. The data obtained was analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). If a significant effect of the treatment is found, the analysis is continued with the Least Significant Difference (LSD) test at a significance level of 5%. The results of the research show that the interaction between the dose of biochar and the dose of hyacinth+arakan compost has no significant effect on plant height, the number of leaves, and the weight of sweet corn cobs. However, the single influence of water hyacinth compost+Arakan proved to be significant on the three variables. A dosage of 20 tons/hectare of water hyacinth compost+Arakan gives the best growth and yield of sweet corn.