Abstract
Black rice is widely consumed because of its beneficial effects on human health. However, its productivity is still low, while mulching has been reported to increase crop yield. This study aimed to determine the effects of different mulches on the growth and yield of three promising black rice lines grown on raised beds under an aerobic irrigation system. The experiment was conducted in Dasan Tebu, West Lombok Regency (Indonesia), using a split-plot design with three replications and two treatment factors, namely black rice promising lines (G3, G6, G9) as the main plots and mulch types (M0 = no mulch, M1 = rice straw mulch, M2 = silver–black plastic mulch) as the subplots. The results showed no significant interaction between black rice genotypes and mulch types, indicating that all three genotypes responded similarly to the mulch treatments, and among the two factors, mulch type was more dominant than genotype in affecting the growth and yield of black rice under the aerobic irrigation system. Mulching significantly increased black rice grain yield, with the highest grain yield (31.54 g/clump) obtained under rice straw mulch treatment compared with plastic mulch (29.30 g/clump) and no mulch (26.86 g/clump), while among the three genotypes, G6 (29.92 g/clump) and G3 (29.82 g/clump) produced higher grain yield than G9 (27.97 g/clump).