Palm oil is an important food and a major source of lipids and biofuel. World population continues to increase, thus creating increasing demand. As such, oil palm will continue to be cultivated worldwide. The growing of oil palm needs to be economically viable and environmentally sustainable. This is will aided by our intensive R &D on the crop, are focused on high oil yield per unit area of land with a view to maximizing returns. This will continue to be our challenge in the future until the yield potential of each site is fully achieved.

The programmes of crop improvement through the utilisation of traditional breeding and selection methods, the development and benefits of vegetative propagation techniques using tissue culture and ongoing efforts to apply molecular and genetic engineering techniques to improve and modify oil composition, are continued.

Oil Palm Comparison

A comparison between SIRIM (Malaysian Palm Oil Seed Certifying Authority) and our minimum qualifying requirement with regards to the mother palm and progeny (offspring) performance is given below.

The extra oil yield (3.96 ton) at US$ 600/ton will earn an extra US$ 2376/Ha every year. This is our minimum standard, not our average yield.

Certified Oil Palm Field Trial – 125 Hectares

Certified Oil Palm Field Trial

Short Trunk Height

With a certain percentage of genes from La Me and Oleifera species, our planting material has the advantage of a short trunk height which translates to a prolonged economic lifespan.

An 8 year old palm barely measures 1.6 m in height

Our 18 year old palm has a trunk height of 4.0 m as compared to 12.0 m for a 25 year old palm from other seed producers. Height increment can measure as low as 25 cm per year which is less than half of that from normal plantings.

Early Maturity

With the incorporation of the Yangambi gene through the paternal lineage our planting material is vigorous and harvesting of fruits can commence 24 months after planting as opposed to the conventional 30-36 months.

High Yield

Our planting material can produce a high yield of 16 tons/ha in the first year of harvesting, subsequently increasing to 35-38 tons/ha in the 5th year of harvesting. Many of our trees have 40 kg bunches yielding over 300 kg per palm/year.

High Yield Tree

Tissue Cultured Material

We are entering the Biotechnology field with the construction of a tissue culture laboratory. Tissue Culture enables replication of individual high performing Palm in large scale and shorter time. Tissue Culture ensures that ramets (offspring) produced are identical to that of the original palm.
Traits such as higher oil/bunch is highly heritable and transferable to the next generation. An improvement of 20-30 % oil yield can be expected over conventional DxP planting material.