Dendrocalamus asper productivity after beginning thinning

Abstract

Abstract Dendrocalamus asper is one of bamboo species that is highly required for industrial purposes and community. Beside as the construction materials, shoot of D. asper has a good taste. However, D. asper cultivation faces some obstacles because its big stem and clump disturb other species. Planting in agroforestry model and an appropriate D. asper clump management are the efforts to attract people to plant D. asper. Thinning is applied in D. asper management. This is expected to be able to reduce its canopy impact on the under plants and to improve D. asper productivity. Objective of this research is to find out the influence of beginning thinning on D. asper clump productivity. The research used complete random design with blocks with three treatments of thinning, i.e. a. thinning by eliminating first generation (J1), b. thinning by eliminating first and second generation (J2), c. without thinning (control/J3). The bamboo clump used in the research is two years old. 2 years old clumps. The planting spaces were 10 m x 10 m with a total of 100 clump. The research showed that J2 give the best height growth (5.18 m). It is better than control/J3 (4.5 m), and there were no differences on parameter of diameter and numbers of stem in a clump, although J2 treatment showed the highest average number of stem in a clump.