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We present the results of a Near-Infrared deep photometric survey of a sampleof six embedded star clusters in the Vela-D molecular cloud, all associatedwith luminous (~10^3 Lsun) IRAS sources. The clusters are unlikely to be olderthan a few 10^6 yrs, since all are still associated with molecular gas. Weemployed the fact that all clusters lie at the same distance and were observedwith the same instrumental setting to derive their properties in a consistentway, being affected by the same instrumental and observational biases. Weextracted the clusters' K Luminosity Functions (KLF) and developed a simplemethod to correct them for extinction, based on colour-magnitude diagrams. Thereliability of the method has been tested by constructing synthetic clustersfrom theoretical tracks for pre-main sequence stars and a standard Initial MassFunction (IMF). The clusters' IMFs have been derived from the dereddened KLFsby adopting a set of pre-main sequence evolutionary tracks and assuming coevalstar formation. All clusters are small (~100 members) and compact (radius\~0.1-0.2 pc); their most massive stars are intermediate-mass (~2-10 Msun)ones. The dereddened KLFs are likely to arise from the same distribution,suggesting that the selected clusters have quite similar IMFs and starformation histories. The IMFs are consistent with those derived for field starsand clusters. Adding them together we found that the ``global'' IMF appearssteeper at the high-mass end and exhibits a drop-off at ~10 Msun. In fact, astandard IMF would predict a star with M>22.5 Msun within one of the clusters,which is not found. Hence, either high-mass stars need larger clusters to beformed, or the IMF of the single clusters is steeper at the high-mass endbecause of the physical conditions in the parental gas.Comment: 17 pages, 14 figures, to be published in Astronomy & Astrophysic

The IMF and star formation history of the stellar clusters in the Vela D cloud