1. INTRODUCTION. In the list of oil yielding crops Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis

Transcription

1 1. INTRODUCTION In the list of oil yielding crops Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) has a prime role since it is the world's most productive oil yielding plant. The latter half of the 20 th century witnessed a phenomenal growth of oil palm cultivation to meet the increasing demand for edible oil and other derived products (Rameshchandra, 1997). It is well known that oil palm has the highest genetic potential among the oil crops and has achieved average productivity of 4-5 tonnes/ hectare I year (Achaya, 1997). It has also been demonstrated that by tissue culture technique the productivity can further be enhanced to 8 t I ha. Thus under identical agro climatic conditions oil palm can yield 6-7 times more, than the other traditional oil seeds cultivated in India (Table 1 ). Incredible productivity coupled with perennial oil source favoured the adoption of oil palms in South East Asian countries particularly Malaysia. Malaysia currently accounts for 51 % of world palm oil production and 62% of world exports (Arumughan et al, 1997). As the biggest producer and exporter of palm oil and palm oil products, Malaysia has an important role to play in fulfilling the growing global needs for oils and fats in general. The commercial importance of oil palm needs no further emphasis as the plant produces two types of oil viz. palm oil from the flesh of the fruit and kernel oil from the endosperm (kernel). It is estimated that for every ten tonnes of palm oil one tonne of palm kernel oil can also be obtained.

2 Cro,p Ground Nut Product Kernel Average Yield Oil Yield (t /ha) (t /ha) Mustard Seed Sunflower Seed Sesame Seed Soybean Seed Safflower Seed Coconut Copra Oil palm* Fruit Oil palm** Fruit * Under rain fed condition (Kerala) Under irrigated condition Table 1: Comparative yields of various oleaginous seeds and fruits in India.

3 In recent history oil palm has been considered in the first place as the source of edible grade oil and other industrial purposes. This has profoundly inflyenced perceptions of appropriate farming systems, emphasizing as it does the development of large-scale commercial plantations. As a consequence much of the research effort has concentrated on these large-scale farming and primary processing systems. Oil palm (Elaeis guineensis) grows around the globe in a zone of 10 latitude to the north and south of the equator. Its utilization as basic nourishment had always been of vital importance to the inhabitants of equatorial region and its existence is reported as long as 3000 Be. Although the history of oil palm can be traced to antiquity its importance as a trade was recognized at the middle of 19 th century. It has been selected by the Africans over the ages to provide palms with a proportion of kernel and palm with high yield of palm oil. The palm was brought to South East Asian countries about 1850's and the seeds were distributed to various chiefly to gardens of those who cared to grow it as an ornamental tree. About 1906, interest in oil palm rose among Malayan planters who planted this tree on estates by way of experiment. Subsequently the Department of Agriculture made several importations of seeds to experimental plantations and public gardens in Kuala Lumpur. The number of plantations increased from 1925 to 1930 with an expansion in the 2

4 development of palm oil processing mills and the commercial importance of the palm as the source of edible oil was recognized. Thus a phenomenal growth of oil palm cultivation was witnessed by the conversion of rubber estates to oil palm plantations by the support of Government and co operate business managements to cash in on the palm oil boom (Nampoodiri, 1997). In the early 1990's the international institutions like World Bank arched the South East Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia to increase their foreign exchange earning and diversified the export portfolio to reduce reliance on timber. Oil palm was seen as the perfect solution and development banks to encourage investment underwrote soft loans. The new era of advancing communication and transport fueled the growth of liberations in Asian countries creating a golden era of oil palm plantations. 1.1 Scope of Oil palm in India Oil palm was first brought to India as a botanical collection at the National Botanical Garden, Calcutta during the latter part of 19 th century. Subsequently the palms were planted on home gardens as an ornamental and some extent on forestland. Government of Kerala had established an oil palm research station in 1960 at Thodupuzha and imported dura and tenera seedlings for planting. The varietal collections maintained at research 3

5 Domestic Imports Total Annual Year Production [lakh tonnes] availability percapita [lakh [lakh tonnes] consumption tonnes] [kg] Table 2: Prodlyction, availability and per-capita consumption of edible oil in India

6 stations by (TxT) formed the basic source for later research and development including seed production. A large scale planting of oil palm was launched from in Kerala covering an area of 3645 ha with imported seeds from Malaysia, Nigeria, and Papua New Guinea. Though the initial performance of the plantation was far below the expectation, the yield level was brought upto 2.7 tonnes of oil per ha in certain areas of plantation units. However the present average yield is 1 ton of oill hal yr on the whole. Table 2 shows the production, availability and percapita consumption of edible oils during the last decade. It should be possible to increase the yield if proper manuring of the soil, moisture conservation and summer irrigation are adopted in all the plantation units. In order to support the oil palm plantation development scientific research related to plant breeding, biochemistry, crop protection, management practices, seedling production and processing units are actively persuaded at National Research Centre for Oil Palm (NRCOP) a constituent body of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), Plant biochemistry Unit, Department of Botany, University College, Kerala and Regional Research Laboratory (RRL) a concern of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Owing to the unique processing requirements for oil palm fruit, palm oil extraction is integral to plantation development. Oil palm fruits after harvest are highly perishable and therefore have to be 4

7 processed without delay. The presence of the active lipase in the fruit mesocarp and its activation under favourable conditions such as over ripening, mechanical injury, storage etc result in extremely high free fatty acid in the oil and consequent problems associated with downstream processing and storage of oil. This necessitates optimization of processing capacity and integration to the plantation size to produce edible quality palm oil. RRL (T) has been actively engaged in the post harvest science and technology of oil palm to provide necessary technological inputs to plantation development programme envisaged in the country. As a result RRL (T) has optimized the processed technology for processing fresh oil palm fruits for the production of edible grade red palm oil. As an acceptance to the indigenous technology for the processing of oil palm fruits suited to the local requirement, a working group constituted by the Government of India identified a total area of 7.96 lakh ha in eleven states of India. About 81 % of area is localised in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka (Nampoodiri, 1997). Assam, Gujarat, Goa, Kerala, Maharashtra, Orissa, Tamil nadu, Tripura and West Bengal are the other potential states (Fig.1). Technology mission on oil seeds and pulses set up by the Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India for augmenting the oil seed production on a mission mode approach had taken up a massive oil palm development programme to cover an area of 80,000 ha during 8 th five 5

8 1 Kerala 2 Tamil Nadu 3 Karnataka 4 Andhra Pradesh 5 Maharashtra 6 GUjarat 7 Orissa 8 West Bengal 9 Tripura 10 Assam Fig.l States identified for Oil palm cultivation in India

9 year plan under irrigated oil palm in the states of Andhra Pradesh (50000 ha), Karnataka (20000 ha), Tamil Nadu (8000 ha) and the remaining area in the states of Gujarat, Orissa, Assam and Tripura. While implementing the massive area expansion programme, the Government had introduced oil palm growth and development programme involving the private and cooperate sector similar to that of sugarcane cultivation and processing. 1.2 Botany of Oil Palm Oil palm belongs to the family "Arecaceae" and is botanically known as Elaeis guineensis_jacq. The generic name Elaeis is derived from the Greek word "elaion"means oil, while the specific name "guineensis"shows that Jacquin attributed its origin to the Guinea Cost. The genus E/aeis includes three species namely E. guineensis, E. odora, and E. oleifera. However, E. guineensis was adopted for commercial cultivation primarily due to its high yielding potential (Fig.2). Under the species E. guineensis there are three varieties viz. dura, pisifera and tenera. Dura (D) and Pisifera (P) are the parental varieties while Tenera (T) is the hybrid (DxP). Dura and pisifera are raised in nurseries for hybridization breeding programme whereas tenera is the commercial cultivar for plantations (Hartley, 1979). 6

10 Fig.2 Fruit Bunches of Oil Palm - Elaeis guineensis - Tenera variety

11 Centre of origin of the oil palm is in the tropical rain forest region of West Africa in a region about km wide along coastal belt from Liberia to Angola. Hot humid climate with a equitable distribution of rainfall ranging from mm are ideal for oil palm cultivation. The South Asia, Central America and West Africa are the major oil palm growing areas in the world (Hartley, 1979). Elaeis guineensis_is a large feather palm, having a solitary columnar stem with short internodes. The mature stem of the oil palm plant is erect, thick and stout with persistent leaf bases. There is a crown of large evergreen foliage leaves arranged in a spiral manner around the stem. The mature leaf is pinnately compound bearing linear leaflets or pinnae on each side of the rachis. The rachis may be divided into two zones, the elongated zone bearing the leaflets and the shorter zone having small lateral spines. The mature leaf bears leaflets and are upto 1.3m long and 6cm broad. As the commercial products of the oil palm are obtained from the fruit, the flowering and the fruiting habits of the plant are of prime interest and importance. The oil palm is monoecious with male and f male flowers occur separately in distinct male and female inflorescences on the same plant. Each inflorescence is a compound spike or spadix carried on a stout peduncle 30-45cm in length. The female inflorescence usually has a length of 30 cm or more before opening. It consists of numerous spikelets. The 7

12 flowers are arranged spirally around the rachis of spikelets. At the end of the spikelet there is a spine of variable length. The inflorescences may contain several thousand flowers. The female flower consists of six sepaloid segments in two whorls of three each, tricarpellate ovary and rudimentary androecium. The sessile stigma has three prominent lobes, which are hairy, and they exude moisture at the receptive stage. The stigmatic lobes are retained in the mature fruits. The male inflorescence has a long peduncle having finger like spikelets with numerous flowers. Each male flower has a perianth of six minute segments, a tubular androecium with six anthers and a rudimentary gynoecium bearing three projections corresponding to the trilobed stigma. Oil palm starts flowering from 18 th month onwards if environmental conditions are favourable. Wind or insects carry out pollination. Earlier manual pollination was practiced in plantation to obtain uniform and higher yield. This practice was later dispensed with in favour of an insect named Elaeidobius kamerunicus._ popularly known as "weevil". In modern oil palm plantations, the weevil is usually cultured and introduced in large numbers (Taniputra et al, 1989). This insect can reach deep into the inflorescence effecting very high fruit setting and higher yield. Pollination proceeds from the apex to the basal part of the inflorescence as the opening of the inflorescence starts from the top and takes about 3-4 days. The 8

13 apical fruits therefore ripen earlier than the basal ones (Hartley, 1979) Oil palm fruit It takes about 180 days from the day of anthesis for the development of fruits to full maturity. Oil palm fruit is a sessile drupe varying in shape from nearly spherical to ovoid or elongated and bulging somewhat at the top. The pericarp of the fruit consists of an outer exocarp or skin, the middle fleshy fibrous mesocarp or pulp and an inner hard endocarp or shell. When measuring the pulp, the exocarp also is included with the mesocarp. The endocarp together with the kernel forms the seed. The unripe fruit is black in colour and it turns to orange red as it ripens. During ripening the mesocarp tissue becomes soft and the endocarp turns stony. Though the mesocarp is the major storehouse of energy in the form of oil, endosperm also contains the reserve energy as oil. The mesocarp region contains fibres which run longitudinally through the oil-bearing tissue and it constitute 16% of the mesocarp. The most commercially significant part of oil palm fruit is the mesocarp from which palm oil is extracted. Based on shell character, the fruit of Elaeis guineensis can be classified into three 'fruit forms' (Fig. 3). a. Dura (D) 'fruit form' has thick shell (2-8 mm), low mesocarp content 9

14 Dura Pisifera Tenera Fig. 3 The three fruit forms ofoilpalm - Dura, Pisifera and Tenera - showing the nature ofendocarp Me: Mesocarp; En: Endocarp; Fr: Fibre ring; Es: Endosperm

15 (35-55%) and no fibre ring. b. Pisifera (P) Shell-less 'fruit form' consists mostly of fleshy mesocarp enclosing endosperm without shell and fibre ring. c. Tenera (T) 'fruit form' has thin shell (0.5-4 mm) with high mesocarp content (60-96%) and a fibre ring around the thin shell (Fig. 4). Palms that produce these 'fruit forms' (D, P, T) cannot be identified based on their vegetative features. In other words, all palms look alike in external appearance. So identification of palms is only possible through examining the internal structure of fruits i.e. endocarp or shell thickness. Hence these 'fruit forms' were considered as three varieties of oil palm - dura, pisifera and tenera (Hartley, 1979). Tenera, the hybrid variety was produced primarily since it had higher mesocarp content and therefore yielded a higher quality of palm oil. This explains the adoption of tenera for commercial cultivation. Whereas tenera is the commercial cultivar for plantations, dura and pisifera are raised in seed gardens for hybridization. 10

16 (a) (b) Fig.4 (a) Oil Palm fruits - Tenera (b) Sectional view of the fruit indicating the differentiation ofpericarp as Epicarp (Ep); Mesocarp(Me); Fibre ring (Fr) and Endocarp (En)