Nutritional Composition and Fiber Fraction of Sorghum Plants Cultivated Intercropping with Horticultural Crops on Various Types of Soil as an Alternative to Ruminant Feed

Abstract This experiment aims to determine the nutritional composition and fiber fraction of sorghum varieties planted intercropping with various types of horticultural plants on various types of soil in the dry land areas of Timor Island. This experiment was carried out using a completely randomized factorial design with 2 factors (3x3) and 3 replications. The first factor is the type of horticultural plant Bitter Gourd (H1), Cucumber (H2), and Long Bean (H3). The second factor is the type of soil, namely lithosol soil (LS), grumusol soil (GS) and alluvial soil (AS). This experiment was carried out for 100 days from the time the soil was processed in the experimental demonstration plot. Data were analyzed using analysis of variance. The results showed that there was no interaction between treatments p>0.05 on nutritional composition and fiber fraction. The factor of different types of horticultural plants in intercropping patterns also has an insignificant influence, namely p>0.05 on the fiber fraction component, but has a real influence of p<0.05 on nutritional composition, while the factor of different types of soil has a significant influence p <0.05 on the nutritional composition of sorghum plants but no effect of p>0.05 on the fiber fraction component. It was concluded that planting sorghum through intercropping patterns with different horticultural crops resulted in differences in nutritional content, which was highest in the intercropping pattern of sorghum with long bean horticultural crops, while differences in soil types provided differences in nutritional composition for sorghum plants, highest in the grumusol soil type.