March 2011 - N°10

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Training courses for our clients

ASD has a long tradition organizing training courses on oil palm cultivation and management of commercial plantations. Such courses have been offered mainly in Costa Rica and several other countries as well. The last international training course on agronomy was offered in Costa Rica in July 2010, and we are now preparing the next one which will be held in july this year. Please keep in mind that we can only take a limited number of students and demand is normally high, so if you are interested, please see other details in this web site and contact our secretary Johana Mora  j.morac@asd-cr.com

Special publications

Besides our regular publications (ASD Oil Palm Papers and ASD in a Nutshell), ASD makes available to its clients several special (occasional) publications, some of which can be obtained directly from its web site .

The objective of these publications is to provide an additional tool to our clients to get the most from our planting materials. These publications cover several subjects, and the followings are some examples:

General Aspects on Cultivation and Processing of the Oil Palm). 2006 (R.Escobar, C.Chinchilla, F.Peralta, A.Alvarado), 22 Pp.	Smallholder Oil Palm Manual. Published by cooperation between FAO and ASD:	Las Pudriciones del Cogollo en Palma Aceitera: La Complejidad del Problema y Una Guía de Convivencia. 2010. (C.Chinchilla) 23 pp.

El Anillo Rojo en Palma Aceitera: Una Guía de Manejo. 2010. (C.Chinchilla)	Una Propuesta para el Registro de la Información Durante las Visitas Fitosanitarias a Plantaciones de Palma Aceitera en América Tropical. 2010. (C.Chinchilla)

Looking for tolerance to PC

ASD has a broad oil palm germplasm base and is using this strength to produce novel crosses, some of which have shown a marked tolerance to abiotic stress and also to spear rot (PC). Besides the OxC hybrid (Amazon), there seems to be plenty of opportunities to finding tolerance to PC within the guineensis species. Some of these materials are now commercially available (Bamenda x Ekona and Tanzania x Ekona) and several others which are in the experimental phase are even more promising. All these planting materials are being evaluated in several countries and areas where PC is prevalent.

Land preparation for an experiment to evaluate a diverse group of crosses looking for PC tolerance in Ecuador

One of such field experiments to select for tolerance to stress and PC was recently planted in the region of San Lorenzo in Ecuador through an agreement with the company Alespalma, where 15 crosses are being tested, including Bamenda x Ekona, Tanzania x Ekona, OxC Amazon*, OxG Brunca, Bamenda x Malawi, Compacta x La Mé, Deli x Ghana, Deli x Malawi, Deli x Tanzania, Enthebe x Ghana, OxG Manaus x Ghana, Tanzania x Ghana and Tanzania x La Mé. Given the prevalence of PC in the region, it is expected to get reliable data on tolerance of these materials in 2-3 years.

Other experiments were planted in Pará, Brazil, where the company Biovale is aggressively planting oil palms. These new areas for the crop are now apparently free of PC, but there exists concern about it, since PC was associated with the final fate of the Dempasa project.

Fresh air blows into our cloning program

Many years have passed since our program to clone the oil palm was started back in the eighties. Initially, there was a slow progress, in part due to the fact that facilities were suboptimal, but now things have drastically changed, and ASD has a modern and efficient laboratory that has made the work more efficient. Nidia Guzmán has been the leader of this effort and now she can relax knowing that the future never looked so bright for her clones of compact palms.

Most past drawbacks were related with the presence in the field of vegetative abnormalities; however, this has been largely overcome as a result of Nidia research efforts that made clear that not all ortets had identical culture (or acclimatization) requirements. A key finding was to determine how nutrient amounts and balances in the media culture were associated with the morphological performance of the plantlets in the laboratory, and that such behavior was also associated with particular vegetative abnormalities in the field. There is no doubt that clone quality has been greatly improved and many growers have seen the potential of this product and now include it within their planting programs.

Nidia Guzman proudly shows a bottle with a group of cloned plantlets ready to go to acclimatization. The quality of these plants is exceptional, due to the vigor of both the aerial part and the root system

General view of the tissue culture laboratory at ASD Coto, Costa Rica

Our distinguished visitors

In our previous number of this newsletter we informed on the signing of the formal agreement to establish "PT ASD-Bakrie Oil Palm Seed Indonesia". This joint venture with the company Bakrie Sumatera Plantations based in Indonesia will produce the best planting materials of ASD.

During March we were honored with the visit of important executives of Bakrie Sumatera Plantations who traveled to Coto to visit the genetic garden and seed and clones producing facilities.

Howard J. Sargeant, Harry M. Nadir and Bungaran Saragih, Bakrie Sumatera Plantations with ASD general manager, Ricardo Escobar