Reduction of Oil Palm Bunch Failure in OxG Hybrid Cultivars (Elaeis oleifera x Elaeis guineensis) through the Deployment of Good Practices
The Colombian Southwestern Oil Palm Zone (Tumaco, Nariño) had a total of 22,243 hectares planted with in- terspecific hybrid OxG cultivars by 2019, with an average fruit yield of 12.3 t/ha/year, number that is considered low when taking into account that other oil-palm-growing regions exceed 20 t/ha/year. For this reason, it was considered a priority to identify the causes behind such a low production and, based on that, design strategies to achieve higher yields. General findings identified “bunch failure” as one of the possible causes. According to the 2017 Agronomic Committee of the Southwestern Zone, this anomaly was present in more than 30% of the affected fruit bunches, therefore the interest in carrying out a study for quantifying the incidence of bunch failure and identifying possible associated factors. For this purpose, two monitoring hectares were established in a hybrid OxG cultivar for a period of one year at a local plantation, establishing controls for crop management practices. Two representative landscapes of the area were considered: plain terrain and hillock. The baseline re- vealed that the losses in production due to bunch failure in the two types of landscape were 36.9% for the plain terrain and 38.7% for hillock areas. In addition, it was observed that 80% of these spoiled clusters did not present evidence of having received assisted pollination. Hence, it was decided to improve this practice, obtaining improvements starting from a 9.7% efficiency in pollination and reaching an efficiency over 90%. The results achieved showed that the increase in the efficiency of assisted pollination, along with adequate crop management practices —such as maintenance, pruning, application of empty fruit bunches and fertilization—, had a positive effect on the percentage of bunch failure, reaching values below 10%.
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | info:eu-repo/semantics/article biblioteca |
| Language: | spa |
| Published: |
Fedepalma
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| Subjects: | Agronomic practices, Assisted pollination, Yield, Prácticas agronómicas, Polinización asistida, Rendimiento, |
| Online Access: | https://publicaciones.fedepalma.org/index.php/palmas/article/view/13505 |
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