Effect of Premium Compost on Soil Carbon Microbial Biomass (SCMB) in Pineapple Plants on Marginal Land Central Lampung

Abstract

Marginal land is degraded land that has the characteristics  an acid soil reaction, and  low in nutrient content, organic carbon, and soil biodiversity. The addition of organic matter, in the form of compost, is expected to be able to rehabilitate these lands. One of the biological indicators of successful land rehabilitation due to the addition of organic matter or compost is soil carbon microbial biomass (SCMB), because microbial biomass is an early indicator of changes in total soil organic carbon. The research was conducted on  Great Giant Pineapple Company (GGPC) , from December 2021 to July 2022.  The aim of research was to studying  the effect of adding various types of compost to increasing the SCMB in Pineapple Plants on Marginal Land Central Lampung . This study was designed using a Randomized Completely Bloc Design (RCBD) consisting of four treatments, namely control (P0) = No compost added (Pineapple Cultivation Standard at  GGPC), P1 = Cow Manure Compost, P2 = Premium compost A, and P3 = Premium compost B, the treatment was repeated 4 times. Data analysis used analysis of variance at the 5% level which had been tested for homogeneity of variance using the Bartlett test and additivity with the Tukey test, then the difference in the mean of the treatments was tested using the orthogonal contrast test. Furthermore, to find out the relationship between the supporting variables and the main variable, a correlation test was carried out. The results showed that the treatment of cow dung compost and premium compost increased the soil carbon microbial biomass (SCMB) at 15 MAP and 16 MAP observations, while at the observations 13 MAP and 14 MAP , application of cow manure compost, premium compost A, and premium compost B were not significantly different compared to the  without compost. The addition of premium compost can increased  soil pH by 33%, but has not been able to significantly increase the SCMB compared to no compost added. Soil org-C and soil pH gave  correlation  with SCMB  at 16 MAP observations, but at observations 13, 14, and 15 MAP soil org-C, soil pH, soil moisture, and soil temperature had no correlation with SCMB.