Tools for sustainable oil palm production. In situ fertilizer studies for plantations in Ecuador.

There is a large and unmet demand of local research in oil palm nutrition. With support of the national oil palm guild we are carrying out a fertilizer trial in Ecuador to find local reference values, and to find the best tools to diagnose and find the best fertilizer recommendations.

IPNI-2010-ECU-14

Overview

Ecuador-14. Tools for sustainable oil palm production. In situ fertilizer studies for plantations in Ecuador. Rationale. Scarce information is available in the tropical Americas on fertilizers field studies for oil palm. Most of such research has been carried out in Southeast Asia (Malaysia and Indonesia). At the same time, a number of differences exist between these two regions that prevent to take at face value the research results from Asia and use them in Latin America. Read more

Year of initiation:2010

Year of completion:2015

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Interpretive Summary

2014

The objectives of this project are to: 1) develop a management tool for the Orellana Agricultural Cooperative (CAO) in order to assess the agronomic and economic results of fertilizers, and 2) use this study as a model to establish new fertilizer trials for other oil palm growers. A Central Composite Design (CCD) factorial experiment was used to study the effect of five application rates of N, K and Mg fertilizer on the growth of immature plants and on fresh fruit bunch (FFB) yield.

2012

Tools for Sustainable Oil Palm Production: In situ Fertilizer Studies for Plantations in Ecuador, 2012. The specific objectives of this project are to develop a management tool for the Orellana Agricultural Cooperative (CAO) to estimate the agronomic and economic results of fertilizer use and to use this model to establish fertilizer trials for other oil palm growers.