June 2011 - N°11

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Courses on Oil Palm Cultivation

ASD has a long tradition organizing courses on oil palm cultivation. This program was initiated more than three decades ago, and more than one thousand students from about 20 countries have been so far trained. The most popular of these courses has been the International Oil Palm Course offered for Spanish speakers, but we now feel that the time is opportune to sense the need for a new course offered in English. If your company is in need of high quality training in oil palm cultivation for your technical personnel, please contact us at your earliest convenience. We need a minimum of students to make feasible such an activity, which could be offered in 2012. For further information, please see announcement

Topics covered:

• Morphology and physiology of the oil palm
• Climatic and soil requirements
• Breeding
• Commercial seed production and processing
• Clonal propagation
• Nursery layout and management
• Plantation layout and infrastructure
• Land preparation
• Planting and maintenance of young plantings
• Cover crops and weed managements
• Plant nutrition and fertilization
• Integrated management of phytosanitary problems
• Harvesting, pruning and harvest quality control
• Infield collection and fruit transport
• Oil extraction mills and effluent treatment
• Administrative aspects
• Business prospects for vegetable oils on a worldwide level

ASD’s Oil Palm Breeding Program and Commercial Production of Seed Varieties

Objectives and a little bit of history. ASD work is directed toward obtaining novel oil palm planting materials with a high yield potential (bunches and oil), reduced vegetative growth and adaptability to different environments. Side by side with this effort, we also keep these same objectives in our permanent breeding program for the several traditional seed varieties that are now planted around the world. The director of the breeding program is also responsible of the programs for commercial seed production, ortet selection (for the tissue culture laboratory), research on molecular biology and other administrative duties in the experimental farm.

ASD de Costa Rica was created in 1986 with the idea of breeding traditional oil palm planting materials. However, since its origins, the company has done a continuous effort to gather a highly respectable gene pool, that has allowed us to create (from the seventies) new seed varieties and clones with immense potential for the industry. The performance of all these varieties is backed by a breeding program that now uses not only the traditional breeding methodologies, but the modern tools of molecular biology.

ASD's breeding program is located in the region of Coto, on the South Pacific coast of Costa Rica (50 mosl, Puntarenas, 5° 77’ South and 2° 87’ North). The region has a typical tropical climate, with a temperature that ranges between 22 and 34°C, annual rainfall about 4,000 mm, and solar radiation below 15 MJ/m²/day. Soils are mostly alluvial Inceptisols and entisols, poorly to moderately well drained.

Under these conditions, the traditional varieties of oil palm, such as Deli x AVROS, Deli x Ekona and Deli x Yangambi grow vigorously: stems may elongate 60 or more centimeters per year and leaves reach eight or more meters in length in adult palms. The environmental conditions of the Coto region are considered quite suitable for oil palm breeding since there are no conditions that could mask the expression of vegetative traits and bunch characteristics, making feasible the selection of genotypes with slow stem growth and short leaves.

Personnel. There are about 150 persons working for the research and commercial seed production programs in Coto. This number includes professionals in agronomy, technicians, field supervisors and administrative and maintenance personnel.

The experimental farm. Our research station is divided into two farms and 13 lots, where diverse experiments are planted besides the parental palms used to produce the commercial seeds and the ortets that originate the compact clones.

The total area is about 600 ha, with a basic infrastructure that consists of 70,447 meters of natural water ways and built canals and 61,500 meters of roads. Near 6.5% of the area is dedicated to commercial seed production (parental palms) and 0.5% pollen sources (pisiferas for commercial and experimental uses). Approximately 3% of the area contains oleifera and OxG hybrids, and 90% is dedicated to progeny trials and the germplasm bank itself.

From the year 2006 we started planting new areas and replanting old stands within the experimental area. A total of 300 ha planted contain descendants of almost all the populations of our genetic pool. From these new plantings, we will develop new generations of guineensis, compact and oleifera mother palms and pollen sources. At the same time, we have established progeny tests to evaluate the performance of selected palms as progenitors. All this allows us to put many things in order to improve the work during the present breeding cycle and prepare things for the following cycle in ten years.

From the present generation we plan to get a new group of African and Compact Deli dura mother palms to significantly increase the production of commercial seeds. We are working to have more than 8,000 mother palms by the end of the year 2013, and at the same time to count with a fair number of guineensis pisifera and compacts to supply enough pollen for the next 15 years.

Seed production. From its creation, ASD has exported more than 262 million seeds of 11 varieties to almost all countries where the oil palm is planted in the tropics around the world. This amount represents about 1.45 millions of hectares planted with these materials.

At present, ASD has 5,550 guineensis and 'compact' mother palms (4,600 of Deli origin and 450 compacts derived from the second backcross of the original compact palm). Besides this, we have 200 mother palms of the african dura, Bamenda and Tanzania origins. In about two years, we expect to have new mother palms, particularly Deli and Compact, which will be selected from the populations planted in 2008.

Our program was able to produce near 60 million seeds during the year 2010, but not all, of course, reach the final client, given the strict quality control rules to produce commercial seeds. The bulk of seed produced are the varieties Deli x Nigeria nigrescens, Deli x Ghana and Deli x Nigeria virescens.

The Variability in Leaf Length

An important objective of our breeding program is to produce commercial varieties with short leaves that could be planted at higher densities (160 or more palms/ha) than the traditional varieties with large leaves (136-143 palms/ha).

An important strength of ASD's breeding program is to count with an ample genetic pool where this characteristic can be exploited. The figure below illustrates some of this variability for leaf length, with data from palms from a particular field experiment.

Comparison of leaf length between a standard and a compact variety. Palms five years old.

Leaf length in palms from a particular experiment showing the large variation of this characteristic between and within origins. Palms were 54 months old .