The effect of green manure (leaves of Gliricidia maculata and Mimosa pigra) on the growth of Roselle (Hibiscus sabdariffa) grown on BRIS soil.

Beach Ridges Interspersed with Swales (BRIS) soil has a physical characteristic as sandy soil which limits the growth performance. It was considered among problematic soil in Malaysia since it has a lower water retention and deficiency nutrient. This study was expected to improve the soil fertility of BRIS soil so that it can be developed for agriculture production. The objective of this research was to evaluate the effect of Mimosa pigra and Gliricidia maculata to amount of soil and to determine the effectiveness between Mimosa pigra and Gliricidia maculata on the growth of Hibiscus sabdariffa. The growth parameters that are being analyze for 8 weeks is the plant’s height, the number of plant’s leaf and the Relative Growth Rate (RGR). This experiment was carried out as a factorial experiment based on a complete randomized design with four replications. The results show that all growth parameters showed significance different on quantity of BRIS soil at (p ≤ 0.05) while the type of green manure shows that it has a significance difference on RGR with p=0.018. G.maculata showed it effectiveness on RGR with mean of 0.0243 compared to M.pigra. Green manure showed beneficial effect based on the growth performance of Hibiscus sabdariffa which showed that plants provided green manure tend to grow healthy. Therefore, the use of green manure for cultivation of H.sabdariffa is recommended in order to reduce the use of chemical fertilizer which is harmful to environment.