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
2017 Annual Interpretive Summary
Through publishing a field manual on 4R oil palm nutrition and scientific journal papers, this project aims to promote adequate and wide-scale use of responsible nutrient management, based on IPNI’s 4R Nutrient Stewardship concept (right source, right rate, right time, and right place), for high yield and profit, and environmental sustainability in the oil palm sector of Southeast Asia. In addition to the purpose of market development, the publications aim at highlighting the importance of scientific research and technological development on sustainable intensification of oil palm. This project was implemented from 2016 to 2017.
IPNI implemented the Southeast Asia - 05 project from 2011 to 2015 that focused on improved nutrient management in oil palm plantations in Central Kalimantan, Indonesia, with support from Kali GmbH. The field trials generated a significant amount of valuable information that will be analyzed and published under this project through a post-doctoral fellowship partnership between K+S Kali GmbH, the Institute of Applied Plant Nutrition (IAPN), and the Department for Crop Sciences, Crop Production Systems in the Tropics at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. The project will produce (1) a field handbook on 4R oil palm nutrition for use by practitioners in the industry, and (2) scientific publications for the scientific knowledge domain.
A scientific journal paper on “Effects of best management practices on dry matter production and fruit production efficiency of oil palm” was submitted to and accepted by the European Journal of Agronomy (2017, 90:209–215). Results were also presented at a seminar on July 4, 2017 at the TROPAGS Institute, University of Göttingen. A second publication on “Fertilizer management effects on oil palm yield and nutrient efficiency on sandy soils with limited water supply in Central Kalimantan” was submitted to Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems, and was accepted assuming satisfactory revision, which is ongoing. The third publication is currently under development. Furthermore, a two-day annual review was held in Penang in December 2017, to outline the 2018 publication schedule, including the development of two peer-reviewed papers and an Oil Palm 4R Nutrition Handbook.
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 would be useful for agronomists at plantations and planters of smallholder oil palm systems, to identify better ways to implement nutrient best management practices for sustainable intensification of oil palm.