A UMM Student Received Funding from Indofood Program due to Polluted Soil Research

Author : Humas | Wednesday, March 29, 2023 07:20 WIB

Mardhotillatil Umroh di Lab Agroteknologi (Foto : Istimewa)

Recovering polluted land that contains metals and pesticides is a challenging matter. Therefore, a student of the Agrotechnology Study Program at the University of Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM), Mardhotillatil Umroh, researched this and came up with an innovation using vermiwash and mycorrhiza to overcome it. The research successfully obtained funding from the Indofood Research Nugraha (IRN) program. This program is organized by PT Indofood Sukses Makmur Tbk (Indofood) to invite students to innovate, especially in local food diversification.

Vermiwash is a liquid organic fertilizer made from vermicompost extracted from earthworms. At the same time, mycorrhiza is a fungus that can symbiosis with plants. The combination is done by giving mycorrhiza at the seedling time, then spraying it using vermiwash.

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She continued the research program for six months and tried it on corn. She started from the preparation to harvesting corn. The type of corn used is quality protein maize from Srikandi Putih variety from bisi. "The development and preparation of vermiwash and mycorrhiza were conducted at the UMM biotechnology laboratory. While planting corn is located in the UMM Rusunawa land," she added.

During her research, she had to collect references from various international journals. Moreover, the use of vermiwash in Indonesia is quite rare. So far, using used vermicompost fertilizers or organic fertilizers derived from earthworm feces is still dominant.

"Many people have used vermicompost, so I tried another innovation. Apart from that, vermiwash can also be used to increase plant growth, so I want to see the potential when the two ingredients (vermiwash and mycorrhiza.red) are combined. To what extent is its effectiveness," she explained enthusiastically.

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The research has received funding of 15 million rupiahs and started in December 2022, and has reached 45 percent. This never gives up girl is optimistic that her breakthrough will contribute to developing environmentally friendly Indonesian agriculture.
"It's just a hypovirulence test, planting in the field and the observation. After that, harvesting and performing data analysis will be held. My plan is after completing this research, I will continue writing my thesis and drafting a journal. Since publishing a journal is also one of the requirements after passing the IRN program," she concluded. (Put/*Nov/Wil)

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