Many claim that commodity plantations release carbon stock and thus contribute to climate change effects. Yet, studies on cocoa carbon stock and nutrients are limited, especially in Malaysia therefore, objective of this study was to determine if there were any significant differences of carbon stock in five different tree parts of cocoa, namely branches, main stem, main roots, fibrous roots, and leaves. Twenty cocoa trees (aged 10 years old) at Kpg Muara Ahi, Serian Sarawak were destructively sampled in March, 2016, and cut into five tree compartments prior to analysis by using CHN and AAS Analyzer. Mean comparison was carried out by using one-way ANOVA SPSS 21.0 software. Total cocoa carbon stock was 27.32 M C ha -1 which branches contributing 47% from the total carbon (12.92 Mg C ha -1 ), followed by main stem (5.42 Mg C ha -1 ), taproot (4.05 Mg C ha -1 ), fibrous root (2.49 Mg C ha -1 ) and leaves (2.44 Mg C ha -1 ). Branches and main stems contained higher total carbon stock due to high total biomass (kg), how-ever, main root showed significantly (p<0.01) highest in carbon content with 42.58% in terms of per tree parts. As for the nutrient content, leaves showed signifi-cantly(p<00.1) the highest in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium content compared to other tree parts with N 2.55 ± 0.04 ppm; P 0.20 ± 0.006 ppm and K 2.68 ± 0.24 ppm, respectively. From the study, it showed that cocoa tree does help in storing carbon. By knowing N, P and K partitioning within cocoa tree, this enable further study to be done especially in applying fertilizer for optimum yield.
The detection of pigments in cacao pods together with colourless flavonoids serves as a useful indicator for pod maturity using a fast and non-destructive multiparametric fluorescence sensor. In this study, the contents of anthocyanin, flavonol, chlorophyll and nitrogen balance were determined monthly (1-5 months) after flower fertilization as pod developed and matured using a fluorescence-based portable sensor on cacao pods from five different clones of DESA1, KKM22, KKM25, MCBC1 and PBC221. There were significant differences (P≤0.05) observed between the interaction of five different cacao clones and pod development periods in flavonol, chlorophyll and nitrogen balance contents. As pods developed, anthocyanin and flavonol accumulated while the content of chlorophyll decreased only when pod matured with nitrogen balance showed a decreasing trend in cacao pods. Among these clones, as expected, natural red appearance in cacao pods of DESA1 showed significantly highest index of anthocyanin (0.637), following by KKM22 (0.255). In addition, there was no significant difference observed in KKM25, MCBC1 and PBC221 for anthocyanin content. During pod development, MCBC1 showed the least content in flavonol (P≤0.05) and the chlorophyll contents in KKM22 and MCBC1 were lower compared to other clones. As a conclusion, non-destructive fluorescence-based indices can be used to measure the pigments and flavonoids in cacao which can provide valuable non-destructive indicators for cacao pod maturity across different cacao cultivars.
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