<p class="Abstract">The effort to increase garlic productivity through improvement of cultivation technology. This study aimed to determine the proper size of cloves and planting distance thus resulting in the best growth and yield of garlic var. Lumbu Hijau. This study was conducted in April-September 2018 in Horticulture Seed Garden Tawangmangu, Karanganyar. This method used was Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) factorial with 2 factors, namely clove size (large, medium, and small) and planting distance (10 cm x 10 cm, 12.5 cm x 12.5 cm, 10 cm x 15 cm). The result showed that the size of cloves had significant effect on plant height, number of leaves, plant dry weight and yield. Planting distance had significant effect on yield. The use of large sized cloves (diameter 19-35 mm) increased plant height, number of leaves, plant dry weight and yield of garlic var. Lumbu Hijau. Maximum garlic yields on spacing of 10 cm x 10 cm. The combination of the size of the cloves with spacing affected plant height, plant weight and the yield of garlic. The greater the size of the cloves with the wider planting distance causing higher plants. The smaller the size of the cloves with a wider spacing causing low garlic yield.</p>

Massive import of garlic products has caused a declining interest of Indonesian farmers to plant garlic due to losing competition in clove size and lower selling price. This has discouraged the farmers from applying the innovation of garlic farming technology that caused low garlic productivity in Indonesia (8.7 t/ha). The purpose of this research was to improve the technology package of garlic cultivation at the farmer level. The study was conducted from July to October 2021 in Cianjur Regency, West Java, Indonesia. The technology packages experimental design was randomized block design with nine replications. The technology packages tested were farmer’s technology package, introduced technology package-1, and introduced technology package-2. The components of the technology package tested were cultivar, mulch types, number of cloves per hole, biofertilizer, biopesticide, and chemical fertilizers. The observed variables were plant growth, bulb yield, and input-output of farming. The results showed that the technology package introduction could increase the plant performance, namely the plant height, stem diameter, bulb fresh weight and bulb diameter. The highest R/C ratio was reached by the technology package introduction-1 (1.47). The introduced technology package-1 was more profitable than package-2 as indicated by the MBCR value of 12.46 and 8.83 respectively.

The possibility of using different types of mulch to improve the bulb yield of shallot (Allium cepa var aggregatum) is observed in this paper. The field experiment compared five different types of mulches, including silver, black, straw, screen nylon, and clear plastic mulches, with a non-mulch as a control treatment. Straw mulch and screen nylon mulch reduced shallot biomass but did not significantly affect bulb yield than the control treatment. At the same time, clear plastic mulch increased fresh bulb yield significantly by 30% from 10.26 t ha-1 to 13.29 t ha-1.

Indonesia has been the largest garlic importing country for decades since the productivities and qualities of national garlic varieties failed to meet domestic demand. Breeding garlic for higher yield conventionally is almost impracticable due to its flowering hinderance, meanwhile the biotechnological approach needs longer time to implement the result. Thus, the most feasible improvement might be done through agronomic aspects. This research was aimed to search for alternative ways in cultivation techniques to improve garlic production. The research was conducted from June 2020 until February 2021 on IVEGRI” s Margahayu experimental station, Lembang, West Java. A split-split plot design was laid out for the combination between genotype as the main plot, plant spacing as the subplot, and plant density (number of seed cloves planted on each planting hole) as the sub-sub plot. The results showed that among all characters observed, the significant interactions between these three factors occurred only in the number of stomata, and seed bulb diameter (4 months after harvested). Meanwhile, the significant interactions either between variety and plant spacing or variety and plant density were recorded in the percentage of the 1st week population, fresh weight per sample, weight after curing per sample, dry weight (4 months after harvested) per sample and weight loss per sample. Pseudo stem diameter was proved to be affected by the interaction only between variety and plant density significantly, meanwhile bulb diameter after curing was significantly affected either by variety or plant spacing. However, the height of dried bulb and chlorophyll content (SPAD value) showed highly significant differences only among the varieties.