03/01/2011 (Borneo Post) - I remembered the first clonal oil palms that were planted.

This move gave us hope for a breakthrough to higher yield.

It was in 1976 and the plantlets were brought in from England where tissue culture work had succeeded in the Unilever laboratory in Bedford. In dishes and test tubes, the tissues were made to grow into callus and dif­ferentiate into roots and shoots, and finally three plantlets were brought to Johor, to be planted at the Unilever estate in Pamol, just outside Kluang.

I was there with the scien­tists: Dr Laurie Jones who had brought the plants, and another Englishman, Dr Hereward Cor­ley. After the last piece of earth was stamped around the palms, we walked up the hill to the bungalow of Joe Walton, the managing director, who enter­tained us to tea.

Later, Dr Corley broke the news at a conference in Kuala Lumpur that the tissue culture palms would behave like the elite mother palms (ortets). They would be unlike palms that were produced sexually.

From a high-yielding palm, the clones would grow into plantlets and produce in exactly the same way, providing of course that the other factors such as soil, ter­rain, rainfall and management remained the same.

Dr Corley said that the yield of the clonal fields would therefore exceed those in the conventional plantings by about thirty per­cent, the increase coming from more bunches, and higher ex­traction rates.

Then, the problems began.

It had to do with the way the bunches grow. In small quanti­ties, the plants would act as expected when multiplied.

However, upon scaling up, the resulting palms tended to pro­duce fruits different from those of the ortets, with abnormalities that the scientists would call mantled fruit, producing not much oil.

Therefore, it was back to basics and in the laboratory, changes were made to the growth me­dium, followed by varying the lighting, the temperature from the air conditioner and humid­ity, and yet for a long time the answers still escaped us.

The laboratory set up by Uni­lever at Banting finally had to close, while the work was con­tinued by other companies that included Felda, Sime Darby, Ad­vanced Agriecological Research the joint venture unit of Kuala Lumpur Kepong and Boustead, and another called Agromac Sdn Bhd headed by the owner, Dr Ng Siew Kee.

Dr Ng was a scientist from United Plantations, who decided to strike out on his own and from his laboratory in Ipoh, he had produced plantlets which were supplied to several plantations, including one called Foong Lee Estate just outside Taiping.

On my visit to Foong Lee, I saw the uniform stand that no conventional plantings could achieve. Certainly the palms were giving a tonnage that ex­ceeds normal plantings (which average about 20 tonnes per hectare or four tonnes of oil) due to more bunches being produced per palm.

The mesocarp was thick, giv­ing a higher extraction rate.

Dr Ng went on to advise other companies, including Perlis Plantations estates (now Will­mar) in Sarawak.

Over fifteen years of observa­tion he had come to the conclu­sion that “mean fruit bunch yield gain was approximately six tonnes per hectare while mean oil yield was 2.5 tonnes tonnes per hectare.” Dr Ng added, “There is thus an urgent need to produce more tissue cultured clones in Malaysia to safeguard the nation’s competitiveness.” Of course, with a high yield per hectare, it would naturally mean that the costs of production per tonne oil would plunge.

With the added yield, the national production will be able to increase, even if we do not increase the acreage in a big way. It is like getting 30 per cent more production without additional areas, labour, hous­ing or bungalows.

The sad news was that Dr Ng’s laboratory could not produce enough, and anyone who wanted to buy plantlets would have to wait for years. Scientists had to be cautious to reduce the inci­dence of abnormalities, and get the tissues from the elite palms to form in the way they want.

Yet, in the big producers’ laboratory now, Felda can only manage to produce about one million plantlets a year, barely enough for its own needs.

I would also like to add that clonal palms were likely to work at their best in Sarawak and Sabah, for with a rainfall of about twice the level seen in the Peninsular, the growth of palms would be much better with their high demand for water.

Of course, with higher produc­tion, the palms will need more research work to see how much additional fertiliser will be needed, and with food and wa­ter in enough quantities, there is little to limit their ability in giving a high yield.

In this way the industry can step up the productivity of the oil palm. We can score another success with the industry, as we have seen in the way the tenera fruit was developed from dura, and importing the Elaeidobius insects into Malaysia to do the pollination.

Now we can take another step by using tissue culture palms to replace the old palms, or to plant new areas in Sarawak. It will mean that more companies in the industry will need to con­sider producing clonal palms, and this is the best time to do it, while the prices of palm oil are high.

Strategic alliances can be formed as Boustead and KLK had done, for companies who are in it a long time have found most of the answers.

Some funds could be set aside to train scientists, and find ortets which are high-yielders. There have been arguments that the plantlets are too costly, the price now is about RM25 each compared to conventional ger­minated seeds which would cost a fraction of that.

It is fairly certain that with laboratories producing more clonal palms, the costs could go down and the prices would decline.

In any case, the additional costs can be recovered in a few months of production.