Species Interactions, Initial Growth Performance and Biomass Productivity of Acacia auriculiformis and Swietenia macrophylla in Tropical Mixed Plantations

Shourav Dutta, Mohammed Kamal Hossain

Abstract


 The study was carried out in the Seed Research Laboratory and nursery of the Institute of Forestry and Environmental Sciences, Chittagong University (IFESCU), Bangladesh to assess the effects of mixed plantings of Acacia auriculiformis (A) and Swietenia macrophylla (S) on initial growth during February to November, 2015. The treatments consist of two pure planting plots (100% A and 100% S) and five mixed planting plots (1A:1S, 1A:2S, 1A:3S, 2A:1S and 3A:1S) of two common forest plantation tree species. In nursery, seeds were sown in a randomized blocks with three replicates of seven treatment plots. Periodic increments on height (cm), collar diameter (cm) and leaf/phyllode number of the seedlings was taken in every month and continued up to 10 months. At the age of 10 months of the experiment, it was found that S. macrophylla seedlings were significantly tallest (90.43 cm) when planted with A. auriculiformis in a proportion of 1A: 3S, whereas A. auriculiformis were tallest in the pure 100% Acacia plot, with an average mean height 135.4 cm. Maximum collar diameter (1.14 cm) was recorded for S. macrophylla in the mixed plots 2A:1S. Fresh, air dry and oven dry weight of shoots and roots of the seedlings were found significantly (p<0.05) highest in 1:1 mixed plot for S. macrophylla. S. macrophylla showed highest quality index when mixed with Acacia in a proportion of 1:1, with an average value of 6.06. The findings suggested that in comparison to pure plots of the fast growing species, mixtures had significantly (p<0.05) better growth and biomass. 


Keywords


Acacia auriculiformis, biomass, Bangladesh, mixed plantations, species interactions, Swietenia macrophylla

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