Leveraging agritechnology for posterity of the oil palm industry

Ordway Jared M., . and Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir, . and Ooi Siew-Eng, . and Nathan Lakey, . and Singh Rajinder, . and Ravigadevi Sambanthamurthi, . and Ong Meilina Abdullah, . and Norashikin Sarpan, . and Mohamad Arif Abd Manaf, . and Nookiah Rajanaidu, . and Low Leslie Eng-Ti, . and Azizah Mokri, . and Nuraziyan Azimi, . and Ooi Leslie Cheng-Li, . and Martienssen Robert A., . and Nan Jiang, . and W. Smith Steven, . (2017) Leveraging agritechnology for posterity of the oil palm industry. [Proceedings Paper]

The year 2017 marks a significant milestone for the Malaysian oil palm industry. The industry has grown from an unassuming ornamental palm to a flourishing commodity in the region and thus this centennial celebration is indeed special to Malaysia. Aside from the oil palm being blessed with an inherent productive characteristic the industrys growth has been phenomenal fuelled by global demands for edible oils. Agricultural products are expected to increase by 70 and net exports of oil seeds and vegetable oils are likely to triple by 2050 to meet the projected population growth of 9 billion. Thus there is a need to intensify productivity amidst the pressure of a shrinking land resource whilst balancing the environmental and social goals. In this context agricultural biotechnology provides the necessary tools to address these challenges. The advent of genome technologies and the declining cost of sequencing has tremendously accelerated oil palm genomics research. By leveraging the germplasm resource as well as a rigorous breeding programme SHELL and VIR genes were discovered and we are now working towards other more complex economically important traits such as height increment disease resistance and yield. Besides conventional breeding cloning of elite oil palms is essentially entrenched in breeding programmes as a way to outpace the long breeding cycle of the oil palm which generally results in slow implementation of new improved planting materials into the commercial pool. However in the course of the tissue culture process the emergence of a common oil palm fruit somaclonal variant known as mantled which severely reduces yield generally halted the progress of the clonal oil palm industry. Through the adoption of a high resolution epigenome technology coupled with progress made in oil palm genome research the team was able to pin down the MANTLED gene that causes mantling. The tissue culture process is also plagued by poor rate of conversion of callus to embryoids. To date the embryogenesis rate has been hovering at 6 as reported by most tissue culture labs. Hypothesis-driven as well as global approaches have been employed to uncover potential biomarkers that may predict for embryogenesis performance of the selected palm. While some of the findings have since been developed into ready-to-use technologies some are undergoing refinement and others have yet to be uncovered. Technologies derived from these findings thus far have proven to benefit the industry in living up to its productivity and sustainability goals in the long run. However its implementation needs to be wide spread for better impact. Developments in agribiotechnology certainly hold considerable promises and for the industry to continue to thrive it needs to adopt and adapt.

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Abstract

The year 2017 marks a significant milestone for the Malaysian oil palm industry. The industry has grown from an unassuming ornamental palm to a flourishing commodity in the region and thus this centennial celebration is indeed special to Malaysia. Aside from the oil palm being blessed with an inherent productive characteristic the industrys growth has been phenomenal fuelled by global demands for edible oils. Agricultural products are expected to increase by 70 and net exports of oil seeds and vegetable oils are likely to triple by 2050 to meet the projected population growth of 9 billion. Thus there is a need to intensify productivity amidst the pressure of a shrinking land resource whilst balancing the environmental and social goals. In this context agricultural biotechnology provides the necessary tools to address these challenges. The advent of genome technologies and the declining cost of sequencing has tremendously accelerated oil palm genomics research. By leveraging the germplasm resource as well as a rigorous breeding programme SHELL and VIR genes were discovered and we are now working towards other more complex economically important traits such as height increment disease resistance and yield. Besides conventional breeding cloning of elite oil palms is essentially entrenched in breeding programmes as a way to outpace the long breeding cycle of the oil palm which generally results in slow implementation of new improved planting materials into the commercial pool. However in the course of the tissue culture process the emergence of a common oil palm fruit somaclonal variant known as mantled which severely reduces yield generally halted the progress of the clonal oil palm industry. Through the adoption of a high resolution epigenome technology coupled with progress made in oil palm genome research the team was able to pin down the MANTLED gene that causes mantling. The tissue culture process is also plagued by poor rate of conversion of callus to embryoids. To date the embryogenesis rate has been hovering at 6 as reported by most tissue culture labs. Hypothesis-driven as well as global approaches have been employed to uncover potential biomarkers that may predict for embryogenesis performance of the selected palm. While some of the findings have since been developed into ready-to-use technologies some are undergoing refinement and others have yet to be uncovered. Technologies derived from these findings thus far have proven to benefit the industry in living up to its productivity and sustainability goals in the long run. However its implementation needs to be wide spread for better impact. Developments in agribiotechnology certainly hold considerable promises and for the industry to continue to thrive it needs to adopt and adapt.

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Item Type:	Proceedings Paper
Additional Information:	Available at Perpustakaan Sultan Abdul Samad Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 UPM Serdang Selangor Malaysia. SB299 P3I61 2017 Call Number.
AGROVOC Term:	Oil palm
AGROVOC Term:	Agricultural research
AGROVOC Term:	Plant biotechnology
AGROVOC Term:	Genetic engineering
AGROVOC Term:	Genomes
AGROVOC Term:	Gene cloning
AGROVOC Term:	Embryogenesis
AGROVOC Term:	Agricultural development
AGROVOC Term:	Sustainability
AGROVOC Term:	Productivity
Geographical Term:	MALAYSIA
Depositing User:	Ms. Suzila Mohamad Kasim
Last Modified:	24 Apr 2025 05:15
URI:	http://webagris.upm.edu.my/id/eprint/13111

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