International Journal of Oil Palm

New Nonwoven Fabrics for Pollination Control Bags for Oil Palm

2022-07-03T21:48:46+07:00

Oil palm hybridisation requires the isolation of inflorescences with pollination control bags (PCBs) for which polyester duraweb^® PCBs are used at the Dami Oil Palm Research Station in Papua New Guinea. For widening the choices of nonwoven PCBs we compared the performance of PCBs from three new types of nonwoven fabrics with the standard duraweb^® PCB on 9-year-old clonal palms in one of the Dami SUPERFAMILY^® seed gardens. The station typically experiences a humid climate and received weekly total rainfall ranging from 53 to 228 mm (total rainfall 1035 mm) during the reproductive phase in March and April 2020, when the trial was conducted. Analyses of variance of a number of traits such as time taken to install the bags, bag intactness, spine damage and water absorption of bags, bunch weight, healthy and total seed number and weight, seed health score, and 100-seed weight were all non-significant. The average number of healthy seeds per bunch was 1120 seeds with mean weight of 376 g per 100 seeds. Blank pollinations showed equal pollen-proofing ability among all bags without any noticeable insect entry. This study, for the first time, has identified three other nonwoven fabric PCBs with no statistical differences from the control duraweb^® bags for most of the important traits, and provides new alternatives to reduce the dependency on only one type of fabric which, when in short supply, could adversely affect the plant breeding and seed production programmes.

Volatility and Transmission of Palm Oil Price in The Province of North Sumatera and Bengkulu Province

2023-10-09T08:11:07+07:00

This study aims to analyze the level of volatility and transmission of palm oil prices in the Rotterdam and Belawan markets as well as the price of palm FFB in the markets of North Sumatera and Bengkulu Provinces. This study uses time series data for 120 months from January 2012 to December 2021. In this study, the data analysis method used to analyze the level of price volatility is Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity-Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (ARCH-GARCH) and to analyze the level of price transmission is Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL). The results showed that 1) the price volatility level in the Rotterdam and Belawan palm oil markets was high, 2) palm oil price transmission which is perfectly transmitted both in the short term and in the long term only occurs between the Rotterdam palm oil market and the Belawan palm oil market.

Testing of Selection Criteria for Screening of Oil Palm Genotypes Partially Resistant to Ganoderma Boninense in Main-Nursery

2023-11-14T13:26:38+07:00

Resistance to basal stem rot (BSR) caused by Ganoderma boninense is now one of the main breeding objectives by many oil palm breeders. Many studies reported that resistance to G. boninense is partial or incomplete resistance.Screening at a longer period in main-nursery is also needed to see genetic variation in rate of infection (‘r) among genotypes. The objective of this study was to test several criteria suitable for identifying genotypes to have low infection rate. Two hundreds of DxP crosses between 16 dura lines and three Pisifera palms were made for testing of their resistance to G. boninense in main-nursery. Since G. boninense is a root disease, its effect on root would be direct and selection based on FRW must be very reliable and accurate. Genotypes which had values better than average value were selected as moderately resistant genotypes to G. boninense. The results showed that: (1) there were differences in fastness of infection and severity of the disease; (2) variation in DS among tested crosses increase with time and reach maximum at the 12th MAI; (3) only four selection criteria had significant correlation FRW, namely, FBW (0.74), AUDPC (-0.261), DS (-0.233), ‘r (-0.205); and (4) four selection criteria which gave the closest results to FRW criterion consecutively were FBW (73%), AUDPC (65%), ‘r (64%), DS (63%). It could be concluded that main-nursery screening could identify genotypes with lower ‘r value. AUDPC and ‘r values are suitable to be used as selection criteria for selecting oil palm genotypes partially resistant to G. boninense in main- nursery screening.