EXAMINING THE USE OF SUBSOIL AS MEDIA FOR OIL PALM SEEDLINGS IN THE MAIN NURSERY

Planting media determine the quality of oil palm seedlings. However, the continued removal of topsoil from plantation areas to be used as seedling growth media caused topsoil depletion. Thus alternative media such as vermicompost needs to be investigated. The aim of this study is to examine alternative media for the main nursery. This research is an extension of a pre-nursery media study. Seedlings from the pre-nursery study were planted in the main nursery using either similar pre-nursery or subsoil media. The research design was a randomised factorial design with two factors. The first factor was: Initial pre-nursery medium, consist six treatments: 100% topsoil, 100% subsoil, 100% vermicompost, 75% subsoil + 25% vermicompost, 50% subsoil + 50% vermicompost, 25% subsoil + 75% vermicompost. The second factor was the main-nursery planting media, which consists of two treatments: similar to pre-nursery and subsoil media. The results showed that the initial pre-nursery media significantly affected the growth of oil palm seedlings in the main nursery at ages 16-22 weeks but not at 24 weeks. The best oil palm seedlings’ growth was the ones grown on vermicompost and subsoil mixed with vermicompost. Subsoil could replace topsoil as a growth medium in the main nursery when the oil palm seeds were grown on fertile media during pre-nursery.