Laporan pemupukan terpadu pada tanaman cengkeh di Sulawesi Utara.

BAHASA: Di Indonesia tanaman cengkeh ditanam pada bermacam-macam keadaan lingkungan baik iklim maupun jenis tanah. Sebagai konsekuensi, hal itu bisa menimbulkan perbedaan cara pengelolaan untuk mendapatkan tingkat produktivitas yang sama. Propinsi Sulawesi Utara merupakan salah satu sentra produksi cengkeh Indonesia. Kegiatan penelitian, khususnya pemupukan di daerah ini, hingga saat ini masih sangat terbatas jumlahnya. Sementara itu, rekomendasi pemupukan pada tanaman tersebut belum berhasil diformulasikan dengan baik. Meskipun demikian, produktivitas cengkeh di Sulawesi Utara masih memungkinkan dapat ditingkatkan melalui pemupukan yang dimodifikasi dari hasil-hasil penelitian pemupukan di daerah lain. Tujuan penelitian adalah ingin mengetahui pengaruh penggunaan pupuk N, P dan K terhadap pertumbuhan dan/hasil cengkeh pada 3 stadium umur tanaman. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa pemberian pupuk belum memperlihatkan perbedaan hasil yang cukup menonjol dilihat dari komponen pertumbuhan dan hasil yang diamati.

English. In Indonesia, clove is grown under various environment conditions, both climatic and edaphic. As the consequences, there is a need of various methods in crops management to obtain maximum yields. If a land on which clove is grown cannot supply nutrients, optimum fertilizing must be recommended. North Sulawesi is important, it is the main producing area for cloves. A number of research activities, particularly on fertilizer use, have been done. However, recommendation of fertilizer use for clove has not been formulated yet. It is because of investigations on fertilizer application that have been done so far are not interconnected. So that no reliable recommendation can be made to cover clove plantation areas which was more than 700 000 hectares in 1990. Nevertheless, it is possible to assemble previous findings and apply them to other plantation areas through modified treatments. This research is aimed at investigating the effect N, P and K fertilizer application on growth and yield of cloves varying in their ages. Randomized block design is used to examine the effects of the fertilizers on clove. Results showed that there was no evidence that application of N, P and K or their combination significantly increased both the increment of length of branches and the number of young flower stalks formed on each sampled branches observed periodically. But the application of N fertilizer yielded better performance than that without N fertilizer. Since the results were only based on temporary data (supporting data) collected for 5 months when the activities had just begun, it might not really reflect the true clove responses.