Cacao plantations on Sulawesi Island, Indonesia: I—an agro-ecological analysis of conventional and organic farms

Abstract

The cacao plantation largely contributes to the Indonesian agricultural economy, and the systems with less environment impact have become fundamental for the local farmers. The current research made a general agro-ecological evaluation of six cacao farms in Sulawesi-Indonesia cultivated under conventional systems and organic management, here referred to as environmental friendly systems (EFS). Ten agro-ecological parameters, the number of fruits per area, the rate of infection (RI), number of seeds per fruit, and seed weight per fruit were evaluated. Furthermore, plant mineral nutrition was also analyzed, including the estimation of diagnosis recommendation integrated systems. The overall data indicated that RI in the conventional systems was lower than that in the EFS. The density of dead plant materials showed negative correlations with the area of weeds and density of weeds. The density of dead plant materials, concentrations of Mg and Fe showed a positive correlation with productivity. In addition, Fe showed negative correlations with weed area and density. The nutrient balance index also showed that in Parigi and Palolo areas, the plants were well stabled in terms of mineral nutrition. These results suggest that some agro-ecological parameters can function as cacao production indicators, especially the biomass and dead leaves together with plant mineral nutrition (Mg and Fe).