IPNI Southeast Asia's International Publication Partnership on Oil Palm Nutrition
Our understanding of the importance of nutrients for sustainable oil palm production is incomplete. Extensive experimental work has been dedicated to understand yield response of oil palm to nutrients applied. Results of such empirical studies have been used to develop models for fertilizer recommendations, and to estimate yields with and without nutrient inputs. Only few of these studies report on nutrient uptake and efficiency. Specific research on nutrient uptake and nutrient use efficiency has been limited to a few studies in the 1960s in Nigeria and Malaysia, and more recently in the 2000s in Malaysia and Indonesia. Acknowledging this issue, IPNI Southeast Asia Program (SEAP) implemented during 2006 and 2016 various large research projects on 4R Nutrient Stewardship in commercial oil palm plantation systems. These projects generated a significant amount of valuable information for improved nutrient management. IPNI and K+S Kali GmbH, an IPNI member company, pooled resources and now partner with the Institute of Applied Plant Nutrition and the Insitute for Crop Production Systems in the Tropics, both of Göttingen’s Georg August University in Germany, to analyze, publish and widely disseminate the data accumulated in these projects.
IPNI-2016-SEAP-7
2016 Annual Interpretive Summary
Through publishing a field manual on 4R oil palm nutrition and scientific journal papers, this project (2016 to 2017) aims to promote adequate and wide scale use of responsible nutrient management based on IPNI’s 4R Nutrient Stewardship Concept, for high yield and profit and environmental sustainability in the oil palm sector of Southeast Asia. The publications aim to highlight the importance of scientific research and technological development on the sustainable intensification of oil palm.
IPNI implemented the SEA05 project during 2011 and 2015 on improved nutrition management in oil palm plantation systems in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. The field trial generated a significant amount of valuable information for improved nutrient management. This project aims to analyze the data and information to produce: (a) a field handbook on 4R oil palm nutrition for use by practitioners in the industry and (b) scientific publications for the scientific knowledge domain. The topics of the scientific publications are: 1) impacts of nutrient application practices on oil palm productivity and the aboveground dry matter production; 2) nutrient management effects on bunch components and oil extraction; 3) development of a complete oil palm nutrient budget; and 4) effects of nutrient management practices on nutrient use efficiency indicators.
For the field manual, the structure and the writing style of the book have been discussed. For scientific publications, the SEA05 dataset for the analyses is explained and transmitted. The outlines of the potential topics have been discussed and agreed by all involving in the project. Preliminary data exploration for the effects of nutrient management on oil palm productivity and aboveground dry matter production has been conducted and discussed. So far, the results suggest that adjusting the frequency and application rate of chemical fertilizers influenced the fresh fruit bunch production, and that the temporal changes in oil palm productivity were not associated with rainfall or soil water balance.
Preliminary results suggest that nutrient management practices play an important role in determining oil palm production in our project plantations in Central Kalimantan. The outputs from this project can be useful for agronomists at plantations and planters of smallholder oil palm systems, to identify better ways to implement nutrient management practices for sustainable intensification of oil palm.