Jan Orville P. Bautista and Novelyn D. Buhong
Abstract
Native fruit trees are valuable because they provide local communities with food, nourishment, and source of livelihood but only few are being utilized. Syzygium polycephaloides locally known as lipote in the Philippines is a native tree species from the family Myrtaceae. Hence, this study was conducted to determine the percent survival and growth response of this species treated with different soil amendments. There were four treatments namely: control or garden soil alone (Treatment 1), mixture of garden soil and cow dung (Treatment 2), mixture of garden soil and chicken manure (Treatment 3), and mixture of garden soil and sawdust (Treatment 4). Results revealed that height gained, leaf count, root collar diameter, and root length were significantly different among treatments. S.polycephaloides seedlings had 100% percent survival except for seedlings applied with chicken manure. Meanwhile, seedlings treated with cow dung gave significant growth response compared to other treatments. As a result, it can be suggested as a soil amendment for lipote seedlings in the nursery given the same set of condition employed in this investigation.