Abstract
At harvest, the stems of the sorghum plant are generally cut down and then it is left abandoned. Meanwhile, the remaining sorghum stems from the harvest have the potential to be regrown for the cultivation of ratoon. The advantages of ratoon cultivation are it has a relatively shorter harvest time than the main crop, requires less water, and lower production costs. The aim of this study was to test the growth and yield of five varieties of sorghum, namely Numbu, Super 1, Suri 3, Keller, and Kawali in ratoon cultivation and to test the growth and yield of sorghum with several selections of the number of shoots in ratoon cultivation. The study used a factorial - Randomized Completed Block Design with 2 treatment factors, repeated 3 times. The first treatment was sorghum varieties consisting of Numbu, Super 1, Suri 3, Keller, and Kawali. The second treatment was the number of shoots consisting of 1 shoot, 2 shoots, 3 shoots, and 4 shoots. Observational data were analyzed using analysis of variance with the F test at 5% level followed by Duncan’s multiple distance test. Observation variables included the height of plant, stem diameter, grain weight per clump, number of grains per clump, the weight of 1000 grains, and yield per plant. The results indicated that the highest plant in the Numbu variety, while the largest stem diameter was in the Kawali variety. The number of shoots 4 increased the grain yield per clump but decreased the plant height compared to the number of shoots that were less. The yield of grains per plot was higher on Super1 varieties as much as 604.33 g or 3.3 ton/ha, however the highest number of grains per clump was on Kawali varieties.