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Forest woodland ecosystem: An insight into the addition of litter through teak plantation
By lakmali | February 2, 2010
A. K. Mani, S. Manivasakan, S. Vijayabaskaran
Teak is an important tree species grown under plantation conditions for timber requirement. Being a deciduous tree, it favours for accelerated nutrient cycling. A field experiment was conducted in an eighteen year old teak plantation at Forest College and Research Institute, Mettupalayam, Tamil Nadu, India to study the litterfall, their composition and rate of decomposition. The litter collected were separated into leaf litter, flowers, fruits and twigs. All were subjected to decomposition by using nylon bag technique. The total annual litterfall accounted for 11,255 kg ha-1. Of the total litter, leaf fall in a year was 9216 kg ha-1 (81.9%) followed by 726 kg ha-1 (6.5 %) by twigs, 707 kg ha-1 (6.3 %) by fruits and 607 kg ha-1 (5.3 %) by the flowers. Among the litter components, flowers decomposed rapidly than the other components. The highest decomposition constant (K) was recorded for flowers (2.39) and the least for fruits (0.70). The per cent remaining of the absolute amount of dry matter of leaf litter, flowers, fruits and twigs after one year of decomposition was 17.3, 9.2, 49.5 and 19.6, respectively.Keywords: Forest woodland ecosystems, Teak plantations, Litter fall Decomposition
A. K. Mani, S. Manivasakan, S. Vijayabaskaran
Regional Research Station, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India
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