Plant scientist Meilina Ong Abdullah treads between neat rows of young palms and points to a petite variety that she says may help revolutionize a $19-billion Malaysian export crop.
The dwarf trees at a government research center in Malaysia’s southern state of Johor are clones of a new variety bred to be 30 percent smaller than regular oil palms when they mature. That’s a significant advantage for farmers harvesting the red and orange fruit that can grow between thorny fronds up to five stories high.
Seedlings of the Clonal Palm Series 2, or CPS2, variety—which can cost up to two times more than conventional plants—are being rolled out by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, the agency responsible for promoting and developing the country’s most valuable agricultural export. The release of CPS2 is largely in response to a labor shortage and the shrinking availability of land for new plantations.
“Plantations need compact and dwarf materials to maximize their land use,” says Meilina, head of the board’s breeding and tissue culture unit, as she watches a colleague measure the distance between trees under the hot equatorial sun.
CPS2, whose smaller size enables farmers to grow more trees per hectare, may also help counter another challenge for palm oil: sustainability.
The commodity, used in everything from chocolate and cosmetics to car fuel, is mired in controversy as native tropical rain forests inhabited by orangutans, rhinoceroses and other endangered species have increasingly made way for oil-palm groves. In Malaysia the groves cover 5.8 million hectares (14.3 million acres)—an area more than twice the size of Massachusetts—as well as 12.3 million hectares of neighboring Indonesia.
Longer life
CPS2’S shorter fronds enable farmers to plant as many as 36 percent more seedlings a hectare without reducing photosynthesis or yield quality. Meanwhile, their slower growth can add a decade to the economic life of a plantation, which is typically 25 years, according to Meilina. “We have been trying to improve yields over the years and at the same time we want to be sustainable,” she said.
Nongovernment environmental organization Greenpeace accused 25 palm oil producers last month of clearing more than 130,000 hectares of rain forest, including 51,600 hectares in the Indonesian province of Papua, since 2015.
Indonesian President Joko Widodo ordered his government last month to halt issuing permits for new palm-oil plantations and the expansion of existing ones for three years, while Malaysia’s government pledged to maintain its forest cover at 50 percent
“Efforts to make more productive use of land already cleared for cultivation, rather than expanding industrial plantation areas through land-grabbing, forest-clearing or peat drainage, is critical,” said Annisa Rahmawati, Greenpeace Southeast Asia’s senior forest campaigner, in an e-mail. Still, productivity improvements do nothing to address the deforestation that’s already occurred, she said.