Soil Management for Sustainable Primary Production—Effect of Conservation Management in a Tropical Plantation—

Abstract

Conversion of tropical forests to crop lands leads decline of soil organic matter and then soil degradation. It is necessary to improve conservation management to establish both conservation of tropical forests and promotion of food production. Reduced tillage, mulching by organic matter and rotation cropping are increasingly recognized as promising method as conservation management of cropland soil. We established an experiment to compare production after introduction of conservation management in a sugarcane plantation in Lampung, Indonesia in 2010. Factorial combination of no-tillage and bagasse mulching were prepared, thus four treatments were compared. There was no significant difference in sugarcane biomass between the treatments, while sugar concentrations were higher in the no-tillage treatments in 2015. These results suggest that introduction of no-tillage and mulching are effective management options in tropical croplands.