Abstract:
Cocoa is one of the plantation crops which ranks third after palm oil and rubber tree. Cocoa is C3 plants that is tollerant to the low sun intensity. One way to achieve these conditions by providing shade. Shade that used to the cocoa seedling consists of artificial shade and natural shade. One of natural shade is palm tree and artificial shade are made from palm midrib arranged adjacent. Besides shade, cocoa also need fertilizer, vermicompost fertilizer is one of the beneficial fertilizer for plants. This research conducted experiments using separate plot design (with 2 factor and 3 replications). The main plot is a shade treatment consisting of two kinds, palm midrib (N1) and stand under the shade of palm trees (N2) and subplot treatment is vermicompost fertilizer that consists of 4 stages which is K0 (without fertilizer), K1 (15 g/polybag), K2 (25 g/polybag) K3 (35 g/polybag). Data were statically analyzed using the analysis of variance and further tested by Duncan Multiple range Test 5%. The parameters measured were plant heigh (cm) number of leaves (leaf), girth (cm), leaf area (cm2) and dry weight (g). By observe the response of seedlings after treatment through the parameters it can concluded that the best treatment is the shade of palm midrib and 25 g/polybag vermicompost fertilizer, which being able to provide good response to the observed parameters such as seedling height (29,00 cm), number of leaves ( 21,16 leafe), girth ( 2,55 cm), leaf area (66,81 cm2) and dry weight (10,38 gram).
