THE EFFECT OF THE FERTILIZER ABSENCE IN COCOA DRY BEAN PRODUCTIVITY
Authors: Helmi, S.
Journal Issue: Malaysian Cocoa Journal, Volume 14/2022
Keywords: Fertilizer, cocoa productivity, non-fertilized
Published On: 10/05/2022
Abstract
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic since 11th March 2020, many sectors were affected due to this in Malaysia. The upstream cocoa industry is also affected severely. During the pandemic, the delivery of government-subsidized farming inputs to smallholders has disrupted mainly fertilizer. This has caused cocoa growers unable to replenish soil nutrients for optimal cocoa beans production. This study aims to identify the effect of the absence of fertilizer over time and predict the effects of current situations concerning cocoa beans productivity. The study is a review of several fertilizer experiments done by the Malaysian Cocoa Board on different fertilizer applications since 2009. The review analyses the yield of dry bean cocoa on all control treatments of these experiments with the absence of fertilizer. The effect was then analyzed using the stochastic process time series method of analysis. The result of the analysis indicates that, in the absence of fertilizer, cocoa dry bean yield will show decrement after 8 months. And after 16 months yield will significantly drop by 10.37%. A standard single linear regression shows an R2 of yield and time is low due to stochastic trends. The study concluded that absence of prolonged absence of fertilizer has an adverse effect on cocoa dry bean yield.