Effect of Nitrogen Addition to Organic + Inorganic Liquid Fertilizers and Seasons on Productivity of Tea Shoots

摘要

The tea plant (Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Kuntze) is the most popular beverage plant in the world because of its high bioactivecompounds and antioxidant properties contained in its shoots. The productivity of tea shoots highly depends certain factors,including fertilization. In a commercial tea plantation, the application of N fertilizer plays essential roles in determining theproductivity of tea shoots. It is commonly implemented by mixing N with organic + inorganic liquid fertilizer. However, theresponse of tea plant to N fertilizer varies depending on its requirement and climate condition. This study investigated theeffect of Nitrogen addition in organic + inorganic liquid fertilizer on the productivity of tea shoots in different seasonal periods.The observation parameters consisted of five indicators, namely shoot number, shoot length, shoot elongation rate, shoot freshweight, and shoot dry weight. Randomized complete block design using overseason was set up with three blocks. Each blockwas occupied by five different treatments, namely control, no addition N, addition 2.33 g N, addition 7.00 g N, and 11.67 g N.Data analysis was conducted using ANOVA (5%) and followed with HSD Tukey (5%). Results demonstrated that there was asignificant difference in the productivity of tea shoots in every treatment. The application of 3000 ppm organic + inorganicliquid fertilizer without Nitrogen addition performed the best outcome than others. This treatment significantly increased theproductivity of fresh weight shoots around 56.34% (24.14-ton ha -1year -1) higher than the control treatment (10.54 ton ha -1year -1). Interestingly, it also highly improved the production of dry weight shoots by around 61.51% (4.8 ton ha -1year -1)greater than the control treatment (1.84 ton ha -1year -1). Thus, it was recommended to replace the conventional fertilizationthat was commonly implemented in the tea plantation with low productivity.