Indonesian

Abstract

Prihastanti E, Tjitrosemito S, Sopandie D, Qoyim I. 2015. The growth of cocoa (Theobroma cacao) fineroot during 13-month drought stress in agroforestry area shaded by Gliricidia sepium. Pros Sem Nas Masy Biodiv Indon 1: 1683-1688. Root is the first organ affected by stress caused by lack of water. Plant root must be efficient in absorbing and transporting water from the soil to fulfill the transpiration needs, but the changes of water environment might disturb the water balance of the plants. Lack of water affects the growth of fineroot, indirectly. Basically, the drought effect might the ability of plants to perform photosynthesis and the carbon allocation in the roots that will affect the growth of new roots. The study was aimed to analyze the impact of soil water content changes in various stress condition and time to the growth and death of cocoa (Theobroma cacao L.) fineroot. The study was performed for 13 months in 6-year old of cocoa agroforestry using Gliricidia sepium as the main shade in the area of ± 1 ha. The drought stress was performed by building trough fall desiccation experiment (TDE) system. The fineroot was taken using soil core method and then observed and separated a microscope. The observation was performed to differentiate dead and live fineroot. The statistical analysis shows that TDE treatment had no effect on dead fineroot (p=0.3761) and live fineroot (p=0.1961). The dynamics of dead and live fineroot was influenced by time (p=0.0001). The fineroot increases during the time. Although, statistically, the growth of live fineroot under stress plot and control are similar, the live cocoa fineroot under the stress plot was higher as observed in the 7th and 13th month.