Report on industrial training at Agriculture Research Station Lagud Sebrang Tenom

The Tenom Agriculture Research Station was started in 1971 primarily as supplementary Cocoa Research Station to the one in Tawau. Furthermore, since 1981 the scope of research has expanded and it show now become a multicrop field research station covering cocoa, coffee, fruit trees and food crops, with other Ministry projects also being located within the area. The station is located at Lagud Sebrang (Latitude 5°N and Longitude 116°E) on an elevation of 200 m to 300 m above sea level. It is 15km to the north-east of Tenom and occupies a gazette area of 625 hectares, of which 60 hectares are allocated to other project. The terrains and soil of the Station are representative of the Tenom Valley with just over half the Station on an alluvial plain dissected by river cut-offs and ox-blow lakes, and the balance consisting of raised alluvial terraces extending to undulating to step-sided hills with soils derived from sandstone and shales. The fertile alluvial soil are loams overlaying sandy or silty clay with a pH 5.0 to 5.5 and identified as Gleyic to Orthic Luvisols of the Tuaran Association. The hills soils consist of thin sandy loams on alluvial terrace of sandstone and shales and generally vary from sandy to gravelly Lithosols with low fertility to more normal Orthic Acrisols of medium fertility of the Crocker, Brantian and Dalit Association.