Weeds Diversity In Oil Palm Plantation At Segamat, Johor

This research was conducted to study the weeds composition and diversity at three different oil palm plantation in Segamat, Johor. This study used nested quadrat method of 10m x 10m where only 1m x 1m of the area were used in collecting weeds species. A total of 19 families, 35 genera, 43 species and 4465 number of individuals of weeds species were found and recorded. The diversity index represented by Shannon Index, H' is 3.45 whereas the evenness index for the overall weeds species was 0.92. The highest weed diversity was observed at Kg. Sri Rahmat oil palm (H'-3.11) followed by Kg. Logah oil palm (H'=3.07) and Felda Medoi oil palm (H'=2.83). The overall species evenness for this study area was 0.92 indicating that the species distribution was relatively high. At Kg. Logah oil palm plantation, the species evenness is almost totally even (EH=0.98) followed by Kg. Sri Rahmat oil palm (EH=0.97) and Felda Medoi oil palm (EH=0.93). Both family Poaceae and Rubiaceae contributed the highest richness that were commonly found within the study area. Therefore, the composition and diversity of weeds recorded from this research was high. Besides that, this research also observed the diversity of weeds based on different weeds treatment in three oil palm plantation. There were several aspects that affect the weeds diversity such as age oil palm plantation, pruning treatment(canopy), management through usage of herbicide, type and usage of fertilizer and location of oil palm plantation based on different elevation. Therefore, this results of this study has demonstrated the successful weed control is essential for economical oil palm production.