The effects of compost and biochar on the growth and yield of red chili plants

Abstract

This research was conducted to examine the effect of compost and biochar on the growth and yield of red chili plants. This research is a factorial experiment using Randomized Block Design (RBD), which consists of two factors: compost (0, 10, 20, and 30 tons ha−1) and the type of biochar (bamboo and coconut shell). The interaction between compost and biochar did not have a significant effect on all variables observed in this study. The dosage of compost has a significant effect on fruit length, fresh fruit weight, and fresh weight of roots. The biochar treatment does not have a significant effect on the observed variables except for the number of fruits that have a significant effect. The treatment of various dosage levels did not show any significant difference, but the application of 30 tons ha−1 compost produced the highest fresh fruit weight of 185.35 g or increased by 20.94% when compared to the treatment without compost of 153.26 g. The treatment of this type of biochar only had a significant effect on the number of chili fruit, namely coconut shell biochar which gave the highest value of 17.17 chilies and was significantly different from bamboo-based biochar which produced 15.00 chilies.