By Monday Ajogun
The Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) has called the adoption of advanced breeding technologies to boost crop productivity, improve farmers’ livelihoods and strengthen agricultural resilience to climate change.
The Executive Director/Chief Executive of NIFOR, Dr Isona Gold, made the call on Tuesday in Benin at a workshop on Genomic Selection in Crop Improvement: Advances and Prospects for Nigerian Food Crops.
Gold said the adoption of modern breeding techniques had become imperative to increase agricultural productivity amid climate change, rising population and urbanisation, which continued to put pressure on available agricultural land.
He said NIFOR, established in 1939, was mandated to provide scientific support for the value chains of oil palm, coconut palm, date palm, raffia palm and shea trees.
According to him, the institute has recorded significant achievements in developing improved planting materials and technologies for the crops.
He said NIFOR had achieved palm oil yields of four tonnes per hectare annually on medium- and large-scale farms and 3.5 tonnes per hectare on smallholder farms using half the recommended fertiliser dosage.
Gold added that the institute had achieved yields of 200 coconuts per tree, equivalent to about 40,000 nuts per hectare at full maturity.
He said the institute had also developed technologies capable of enabling Date farmers to produce more than 30 tonnes of fruits per hectare annually.
He revealed that raffia palm had significant economic potential, with estimated sap yields of about 1,000 litres per tree per year.
The NIFOR chief executive said the achievements demonstrated the economic potential of the crops and the need to sustain investment in research and development.
He, however, warned that climate change, increasing temperatures, desertification, population growth and urbanisation posed challenges to agricultural production.
Gold said the institute was working to increase palm oil production from the current four tonnes per hectare annually to six tonnes, despite changing climatic conditions.
He urged participants to take advantage of the workshop to learn from the resource persons, whom he described as experienced experts in oil palm breeding.
The programme, which later moved to a question-and-answer session, during which NIFOR executive director highlighted the potential of other regions, particularly the Middle Belt, to support oil palm production.
In his presentation, Dr Claude Bakoume, the Africa Regional Representative of the International Society for Oil Palm Breeders, explained that selection in crop improvement involved identifying plants with desirable traits for breeding.
Bakoume said genetic variation was essential for effective selection, noting that breeders could not select superior plants from a population in which all the plants were genetically identical.
He said oil palm breeders primarily sought to improve oil yield, while also considering other desirable characteristics, including disease resistance and adaptation to prevailing environmental conditions.
He explained that conventional breeding required considerable time, as breeders had to develop, evaluate and select plants across several generations before identifying materials with superior performance.
The lecturer, while speaking on Characteristics and data of interest for oil palm breeding using the Reciprocal Recurrent Selection, maintained that its advantages were more than the disadvantages.
Prof. Dennis Vwioko, a participant, said genomic selection would improve crop breeding by making the process more systematic, traceable and efficient.
Vwioko explained that crop breeding was a long-term process that required patience.
He maintained that the introduction of genomic selection would not produce immediate results but would improve how breeding activities were conducted and documented.
He said the technology could help researchers understand the genetic factors responsible for desirable traits in plants, including high productivity, disease resistance and improved crop quality.
Dr Rajinder Singh, an expert from the Advanced Biotechnology and Breeding Centre of the Malaysian Palm Oil Board, Malaysia, while delivery his lecture, highlighted the importance of oil palm in food production, energy security.
Singh said oil palm was a unique crop capable of producing two types of oil from the same fruit bunch, making it valuable for both food and industrial applications.
He said the growing global population and increasing demand for vegetable oils required improvements in oil palm productivity to meet future consumption needs.
He explained that increasing production would be necessary to meet rising demand for edible oils and other palm oil products. (NAN)
AJOM/KOO
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