PENGARUH METODE GULUDAN TERHADAP HASIL PANEN PORANG DI DESA PONGKOL MACANAN KECAMATAN KOCERET KABUPATEN NGANJUK

Abstract

Background: Indonesia is blessed with abundant natural wealth. Starting from the natural wealth of the sea, mineral potential to forest wealth with high biodiversity potential. Around 163 million hectares of Indonesia’s territory is a stretch of tropical forest consisting of conservation forests, limited production forests, protected forests, and production foreststhat can be conserved. The Ministry of Forestry seeks to realize forest management by optimizing the resources included in and around the forest. Future forestry development is direct to involve greater community participation. One of the efforts to empower communities around the forest is to plant porang on forest land or community land.

Porang plants can be cultivated on industrial forest land under stands of teak, rosewood, mahogany, and sengon trees. In 2012 the Minister of State-Owned Enterprises assigned Indonesian State Forestry Company to develop porang in the Community Forest Management Program. Indonesian State Forestry Company Unit I East Java has currently planted 1.600 hectares of porang in Forest Management Unit Jember (121 ha), Nganjuk (759 ha), Padangan (3,9 ha), Saradan (615 ha), Bojonegoro (35,3 ha), and Madiun (70 ha). Indonesian State Forestry Company Unit II Central Java is currently developing 1.200 hectares of porang plants spread over four Forest Management Unit, namely Forest Management Unit Blora (150 ha), Cepu (480 ha), Mantingan (50 ha), and Randublatung (520 ha). Even Indonesian state Forestry Company is also planning to establish a porang management factory in Blora with an investment of around Rp 50 billion.

The porang plants has a strategic value that needs to be developed because it offers a large export opportunity. Indonesia exports porang in the form of cassava or flour. According to data from the Director General of Holticulture of the Ministry Of Agriculture as of 2020 from January-September for porang export, either in the form of porang chips, flour, tubers in the form of slices, or not slices, the volume reached 10.931 tons or US$ 31.427.394. Ministry of Agriculture is encouraging the development of the potential of porang tubers, so that export volumes continue to increase. Dsn. Pongkol, Ds. Macanan, Kec. Loceret, Kab. Nganjuk is one of areas suitable for planting porang. the soil is loose, fertile, has a light texture and there is shade with an intensity of 40%-60% making porang grow well in this area. In Dsn. Pongkol, Ds. Macanan, Kec. Loceret, Kab. Nganjuk has many farmers who use the mound method to plant porang.

Reseacrh problems: Based on the description above, the author is interested in knowing more about the effec of the mound method on poranf harvests. The problems raised in this research are (1) how to classify and morphology of porang plants? (2)  How the influence of the mound method on the yield of porang in Dsn. Pongkol, Ds. Macanan, Kec. Loceret, Kab. Nganjuk?.

Research Methods: The type of this research is field research. In this study, primary data source is obtained from trough direct interviews with farmers in Pongkol village. While secondary data was obtained from Biotropical journal data and websites on the internet about the effect of the mound method on porang yields.

Literature Review: Porang (Amorphophallus muelleri) is a species that can grow well in the forests of Java Island, so that in Japan it is know as “Jawa Konyaku”. The species was first discovered in West Africa and spread eastward trough the Andaman Islands of India, towards Myanmar, Thailand, China, Japan, and Indonesia. Porang plants are tubers belonging to the Araceae family and the monocotyledonae class. Porang is a shurb (herb) with tubers in the ground. The characteristic of porang plants, namely the stems of the porang plants are erect, soft, smooth stems are green or black with white spots. The leaves of the single porang plant have a base of 3,tend to be dark green or bright green, have a leaf base where the bulbil grows (sice the plant is 2 months old). Porang plants produce large flowers in the terminal section (consisting of short stems, spathas, and peduncles) which emit a foul odor The flower stalks are plain, longitude or oval in shape, pale pink, yellowish, or light brown. Porang plants produce two kinds of tubers, namely stems tubers that are in the ground and bulbil tubers which are found at the base of each branch of leaf stalk. The chemical characterictic of porang plants are grayish brown skin color, yellow flesh color, 15-16% glucomanan content, 20-30 aggregate starch granule diameter, 2-3 single, and needle-shaped calium oxalate. Porang plants can be used a natural fiber substitute for gelatin, raw material for noodles, syrup thickeners, water purifiers, silicon gel substitute as electrical insulators, and many other benefits of porang plants.

Research Results: Based on the result of the author’s interviews with farmers in Pongkol Village that most farmers in Ds. Pongkol grows porang using the mound method and usually porang plants are planted in dry soil under tree stands, because porang plants require 40%-60% sunlight. There are many advantages that farmers get when planting porang using the mound method, including making easier to plant spacing, making it easier to remove rain water, being able to prevent erosion, accleretating the growth of porang plants, accleretating tuber growth, making it easier to make holes, making it easier to do weeding, making it easier to put fertilizer, the tubers produce are large, and the bulbil produced are more. However, planting porang using the mound method requires a lot of energy and also requires a lot of money.

Suggestions: Through this article, it is suggested that porang plants need to be cultivated more optimally. One way to cultivate porang plants is to plant porang in mounds. From the results of my research on the effect of the mound method on porang yields, it can be seen about the classification and morphology of porang plants, as well as how to plant a good porang plant, namely by using the mound method. The author here is of course aware that there are still many mistakes in writing  the paper above. Therefore, it is hoped that the readers can continue and improve the paper.