Rest

Sorry, post another OOT here...

There's no new post recently because I got fever and I must rest and stay in bed for couple days. But I'm fine now and hopefully soon I'll post the article I promised before.

Jatropha Plantation (Seedling, Part 2)

Ok, in this part I will talk again about seedling but this time it is from seed. The best way to get good quality seeds is by buying it from authorized seller. The seed sold by them usually certified and tested (minimal viability is 80%). Viability means in general "capacity for survival" and is more specifically used to mean a capacity for living, developing, or germinating under favorable conditions. But if you want to get the seed from your own plant, just make sure you get the best seed. Ok, now to get the best seed you must follow the criteria described as follows:

• Seed comes from ripe/mature fruit. It is of course vital point, the ripe fruit is marked with its color that turn to yellow. As comparison, young fruit have the color of green and then turn to yellow as it ripe and turn to brown and dried.
• Seed's shape is oval with black/dark/dark brown in color.
• Other criteria are the color of the kernel, it is white brownish and you also need to consider about the crack of the shell. It must not over 10%.

ok, for better understanding, not just theory, here's the picture of the fruit in its three stage of ripening :)

Click image for larger view

Next on Bioenergy: seedling from seed

Jatropha Plantation (Seedling, Part 1)

Ok, we have talked about growth requirements, population per hectare and even dimension of the hole to plant, now I will talk about the seedling. Actually there are several ways to get the seedling, the easiest is by buying it :) for anyone who want to produce it by themselves here's I got some info ;) Seedling can be produced by plants cutting, growing seed, or by tissue culture.

The first candidate, cutting. Plant cutting, also known as striking/cloning, is a technique for vegetatively (asexually) propagating plants in which a piece of the source plant containing at least one stem cell is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil, potting mix, coir or rock wool. The cutting produces new roots, stems, or both, and thus becomes a new plant independent of the parent (wikipedia). That the general picture is described, then here's the visual part of Jatropha's cutting.

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Picture above shows the cuttings in polybag. It just been cut so there's no leaf yet but you can see clearly it's cutting. For the growing part of cutting which already have leaves is as follows:

Click image for larger view