Speaker
Description
Introduction
Since 2000, oil palm cultivation has generated considerable controversy, as the >20 million ha of plantations linked with deforestation, burning, a high carbon footprint, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution from the with palm oil industry. The effects of palm oil on human health have also been critiqued, with palm oil used in various fast foods and iconic products like donuts and Nutella. Despite these concerns, the high continuous fruit production (of >35 t FFB/ha) and high oil yield (>28% of extraction rate) of oil palm make it a cheap and high-quality resource for increasing global demand for edible oil. Thus, the oil palm chain, from planters to industry, has sought to improve the environmental impacts of oil palm and engaged the R&D sector to minimize negative impacts of oil palm production. Under pressure of environmental lobbyists, such as WWF, there have been environmental improvements due to the establishment of international obligations for planters to obtain eco-certification (like RSPO Round Table for Palm Oil) and the preference of buyers to purchase “green oil” with certified origin. At the same time, the development of genomics and transcriptomics technologies for oil palm since 2013 has allowed researchers to select varieties with a high yield potential (along with markers for other desirable traits such as drought tolerance, pathogen resistance, and oil composition) and then restrict new planting extension by reducing some local yield gaps. Recently, oil palm agronomists have focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from plantations by modifying fertilizer use (decreasing the quantity, choice of some fertilizer type) especially the addition of potassium (KCl: until 300 kg/ha/year) that is commonly used to increase fruit production. Recent metabolomics and proteomics studies have highlighted the potential of using oil palm metabolism data to improve fertilizer efficiency management. A better definition of the nutritional status of individual trees is required to optimize the mineral diagnosis system, which is used to manage fertilizer applications in plantation, and “-omics” tools, in addition with mineral data represent a great potential solution. The iPALMS (Identifying Practicable functionAL biomarkers to Monitor nutritional requirements in oil palm agroSystems, 4)) has been elaborate to test the omics solution for fertilizer management.
Materials and Methods
Two set of data (one coming from important mineral analyses (1) under KCl gradient) and other (metabolomics (3) coming from same plantation were matched and submitted to multivariate analyses in order to identify best mixed bio-indicators (the excercice have been done for K on K0/K3 trials) and for a futur building K-bio-Index able to integrate K and metabolic palm status precisely.
Results
Some evidence shown that high K level might be well correlated to K rachis and K rachis mass and dopamine-leaf as well as sucrose-leaf levels when less evidently low K seems related to phosphate-leaf , N-rachis level and Mg-leaf (see figure).
Discussion
The main point will be to discuss if these kind of bio-mixed indicators might be applicable in the field to manage LD (Leaf Diagnosis) method used in the « French system » to apply fertilizer related to oil palm trees requirements (see Figure)
Figure
References
(1) Lamade and Tcherkez, 2023 Revisiting foliar diagnosis for oil palm potassium nutrition. European Journal of Agronomy. 143:126694, 14 p.
(2) Mirande-Ney et al. 2019 C. Mirande-Ney, G. Tcherkez, F. Gilard, J. Ghashghaie, E. Lamade . Effects of potassium fertilization on oil palm fruit metabolism and mesocarp lipid accumulation. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry (2019) 67 pp 9432-9440.
(3) Mirande-Ney C., Tcherkez G., Balliau, T., Zivy M. Gilard F., Cui J. Ghashghaie J., Lamade E. 2020. Metabolic leaf responses to potassium availability in oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) trees grown in field. Environmental and Experimental Botany, 175 :10 p.
(4) iPALMS project (2022-2025): Identifying Practicable functionAL biomarkers to
Monitor nutritional requirements in oil palm agroSystems, awarded by European
Marie Curie funds (beneficiary : E. Lamade)
This work has been totally founded by CIRAD UPR 80 (UMR ABSys).
| Keywords | oil palm; potassium nutrition; fertilisation; omics tools, mineral diagnosis |
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