Effect of silicon concentration on soybean plant.

The increase of soybean production in Indonesia faces various obstacles, where there are only limited productive land for soybean cultivation. Soybeans are generally grown in paddy fields. While Silica (Si) is available in lowland soils compared to non-rice fields because rice plants accumulate Si. The Si element has the function to increase the cell wall lag and the rate hence the low Si impacts the productivity of soybean plants. This paper aims to study the effect of Si concentration on the growth and yield of soybean plants. In this paper, a randomized block design is used as the experimental research methodology. The treatments were to apply silica fertilizer concentration with different application times, namely P1=Liquid Silica 15 mL L⁻¹ with two application times of 15 DAP, 30 DAP; P2=Liquid Silica 15 mL L⁻¹ with three application times 15 DAP, 30 DAP, 45 DAP; P3=Liquid Silica 30 mL L⁻¹ with two application times 15 DAP, 30 DAP; and P4=Liquid Silica 30 mL L⁻¹ with three application times 15 DAP, 30 DAP, 45 DAP. Each treatment was repeated four times. The parameters observed to measure growth response and harvest yield were leaf area, plant dry weight, number of pods, and wet weight of seeds per plant. The analysis of variance at the 5% level shows that the application of silica with different application times affect all experimental parameters. Silica fertilizer concentration of 30 mL L⁻¹ with three applications is the best fertilizer recommendation for soybean growth and yield. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]