Evolving Strategies in Oil Palm Agronomy

Background

There is an evident need for the oil palm industry to undertake steps to increase productivity on existing planted land considering the scarcity of suitable land for further expansion. While yield increases in the past have been moderate, new, more ‘knowledge-intensive' technologies are now available that promise an effective use of inputs and significant, environmentally sound increases in productivity and profitability.

Integration

The Oil Palm Platform works towards a coherent framework for knowledge-based crop and nutrient management that integrates information, tools, and technologies for an ecological intensification of palm oil production. Recognizing estate-specific needs, we aim at achieving a consensus among researchers and planters on crop and nutrient management principles providing management options that can be used to develop site-specific solutions following the same generic principles.

A Market Place

The Oil Palm Platform builds on efforts of individual oil palm agronomists and technical experts from various companies and organizations interested in the integration of information, tools, and technologies. The Oil Palm Platform is a market place to benefit from sharing ideas, experience, and expertise.

Crop and nutrient management principles

Principle 1: Decision making based on relevant information

• Optimal resource management requires an understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of factors that influence production.
• Consistent, accurate, and reliable data collected in the field greatly enhance the ability of decision-makers in identifying key constraints to increasing productivity, provided that data are carefully stored in an integrated Agronomic Management Information System (AMIS) with analytical tools.

Principle 2: Development of management units based on soil and plant surveys

• Proper land and soil survey is required as a first step in the development of management units.
• Delineation of borderlines for management units can be further improved by analyzing relevant soil and plant properties using geo-statistical methods in combination with AMIS.
• Precise management strategies need to be developed at a practical and adequate scale.

Principle 3: Best management practice (BMP) for optimal economic yield

• BMP blocks embedded at selected locations in the estate allow a quantitative analysis of the synergistic effects on yield that occur when a set of management practices is improved.
• Yield gaps between BMP and surrounding blocks are directly linked to differences in crop recovery, canopy and nutrient management, drainage, and other best management practices.
• BMP blocks serve as benchmark and demonstration for training on required standards of field upkeep and maintenance.

Principle 4: Plant-based determination of nutrient needs

• Nutrient deficiencies and associated nutrient needs of oil palms are largely based plant tissue analysis providing information on leaf nutrient levels and total leaf cations.
• A scoring system based on visual deficiency symptoms provides corroborative information on the plant nutrient status.
• A rapid overview of the spatial distribution of likely nutrient deficiencies is provided with the integrated Agronomic Management Information System (AMIS).

Principle 5: ‘Need-based' fertilizer use for effective use of nutrients

• Effective use of nutrients requires preventive and corrective measures to manage nutrients efficiently, sustain the soil resource base, and increase the profitability of production.
• Fertilizer recommendations are developed based on foliar diagnosis supported by multi-factorial fertilizer trials.
• New site-specific concepts need to be explored to optimize fertilizer nutrient use considering yield gap analysis, benchmark yields in BMP blocks with embedded omission plots to determine nutrient limited yield, and estimates of agronomic efficiency (yield increase per unit fertilizer nutrient applied).

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