Reproductive Growth of Vetiver Grass (Chrysopogon Zizanioides) Response To Frequency of Water Hyacinth Extract Basal Application

Abstract

Soil degradation is a major agricultural and environmental problem creating threat to food security in the Philippines (NAP 2004-2010). In response to environmental mitigation needs over the traditional engineering solutions is a versatile cost-efficient bio-engineering using Vetiver grass (Chrysopogan zizanioides). However, vetiver grass has difficulty in producing viable seeds and the general propagation is through division of roots replicated by vegetative propagation. (Truong, 2006).The study “Reproductive Growth of Vetiver (Chrysopogon zizanioides) Response to Frequency of Water Hyacinth Extract Basal Application” was conducted to provide instructive and reference material for the propagation of vetiver and promote the utilization of abandoned plant biomass like water hyacinth in propagating viable vetiver grass for soil protection and conservation. The study indicated soil pot experiment with three (3) treatments (frequency of basal application of water hyacinth extract) for Treatment 1 (every 15 days), Treatment 2 (every 30 days) and Treatment 3 (No Application) were tested for the reproductive growth of vetiver grass in terms of biomass fresh weight, roots and leaves length, number of shoots produced and clump diameter. The vetiver plant biomass produced were T1-4.76, T2-4.4g and T3-3.34g respectively. The number of shoots produced in T1 was 2 while both T2 and T3 only 1 shoots were propagated. The leaves and root length in T1 were longer (36.82cm and 29.2cm) compared to T2 and T3. The clump diameter in T1 (1.04 cm) was the biggest. The reproductive growth of vetiver in terms of roots, leaves, clump, and shoots were stimulated by basal application at 15 days. The Cohen’s d test for the effect size shows a small (0.20) practical significant difference on the growth attributes in terms of plant biomass root and leaves length and clump diameter among treatments used while a very large (>0.80) effect size was observed for the number of shoot. The statistical analysis for the significant differences of the variations on the growth of vetiver between treatments revealed that there is no significant difference which implied that the frequency of basal application every 15 days and every 30 days both provided the same effect as indicated by the t-value of -0.76, 1.92 for plant biomass, 1.55 on the number of roots, 1.63 on the root length, 1.77 and -0.05 on the clump diameter. The ratio of the root and leaves length were 1:1.26, 1:1:24 and 1:1:18 for 3 treatments respectively. This showed that for every 1 cm, growth of root length there is 1.26cm growth in leaves for T1 as the highest ratio obtained. The ration of clump diameter and number of shoots were calculated 1:2 (T1), 1:1 (T2) and 1:1(T3). This revealed that for every 1cm growth of clump diameter there were 2 vetiver shoots produced for T1 which was the highest ratio obtained. The vetiver tillers preferred the basal application of water hyacinth extract for 15 or 30 days for continuous reproductive growth thus the null hypothesis was accepted. However, the Cohen’s d test for practical significance of the difference in the growth revealed a greater (>0.80) effect size for the number of shoot s which implied that the basal application of water hyacinth for every 15 days has enhanced the vegetative propagation of vetiver for the number of shoots with equivalent clump diameter and shoots ratio of 1cm clump growth to produce 2 tillers or shoots. It is recommended that once a week frequency with higher dosage of basal application to promote biomass growth. It is also suggested to test and analyze on the performance of water hyacinth extract on the vetiver rootsystem holding capacity. It is also suggested for further study on vetiver grass as aid for soil erosion and water pollutants reduction.