Luffa Gourd Production Practices from Transplanting and Direct Seeding Methods for Composite Productions

Abstract

World is facing an increase of environmental concerns recently regarding on natural and synthetic fibers problems. Producing synthetic fibers may cost highly and create a few financial issues on the production matter. Moreover, synthetic fiber products have several disadvantages such as they are non-biodegradable. Some of them may cause health related problems and expose a significant risk. Researchers aimed to find the replacement for synthetic fibers with less cost production and renewable sources which lead to development of biomaterials-based composites production. Luffa is an eco-friendly crop, has been added as the new fibrous fruit with short harvest period. This study have applied a few practices using direct seeding and transplanting methods for low cost luffa production that aim for composites production. On the other hand, this study showed that transplanting (TP) method is better than direct seeding (DS) method based on the growth performance. TP method showed highest average of plant height (cm) and average total dry weight (g) of luffa fruits with 74.42±0.68 and 91.08±2.26 respectively whereas lower growth yield performance showed by DS method. Other parameters observed are the number of leaves and number of fruits which is a competent sources to the current composites sources, synthetic fibers. Hence, the results showed that luffa has the potential as a low cost and short harvest duration production plant.