Oil Palm
Botanical Name: Elaeis guineenisis
Family: Arecaceae
History:-
Human use of oil palms may date as far back as 5,000 years; in the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered a substance that they concluded was originally palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating back to 3,000 BCE. It is believed that Arab traders brought the oil palm to Egypt. Palm oil from Elaeis guineensis has long been recognized in West and Central African countries, and is widely used as a cooking oil. European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use as a cooking oil in Europe.
Palm oil became a highly sought-after commodity by British traders, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery during Britain's Industrial Revolution.
Palm Nursery:-
To have fine seedlings in the nursery you must
• Choose a good site and prepare it well,
• Choose the finest seedlings,
• Water them, protect them against erosion and weeds, give them fertilizers, protect them against insects and diseases.
Selection of the site
The soil should be fairly rich and well prepared. If you clear a forest site for the nursery, pull out all the trees and burn them. Burning all the wood helps to control certain diseases which might attack the roots of the oil palms, and it also makes the soil more fertile. Spread the ashes all over the plot. If you put the nursery on a field which is already cultivated, pull up all the old crops: cocoa trees, coffee trees, oil palms. Burn all the wood.
When the site is well cleared, it needs deep tilling. You should till 40 centimeters deep with a hoe or a tractor.
To improve the soil structure, you can then sow a green-manure crop. When these crops have grown, work them into the soil by tilling again. Then apply fertilizers: 500 kilograms of dicalcium phosphate per hectare.
Layout of paths and nursery beds
Nursery bed is the name for the strip of soil where the oil palm seedlings are planted.
It is best to make the nursery on flat ground .But, if the ground slopes, the beds must lie across the slope. The beds should be 45 meters long and 3.5 meters wide .The soil of the beds should be well worked to make it quite flat. After that, apply a dressing of fertilizer. For instance, at La Mé, Ivory Coast, 250 kilo grams of 10:10:20 fertilizer are applied per hectare.
Making holes for seedlings and transplanting
To know where to make the holes for your seedlings, make a pattern. At the places where you have put your little pegs, make a hole with a Richard plant setter. Then put a seedling with its ball of earth into each hole. You must give the seedlings a lot of water. But do not water when it is hot; it is best to water in the evening and the morning.
To protect the soil against erosion, mulch it. Cover the ground with herbage or cluster residues. Leave a ring of 20 centimeters of unmulched ground around each seedling. If you mulch with cluster residues, put them down only three months after transplanting, so that the insects do not attack the young leaves. If you mulch with herbage, you must replace the herbage when it rots. Then hoe the soil. If you cannot get enough water for the seedlings, transplant them into the nursery at the beginning of the rainy season. At the end of the rainy season, the seedlings will be strong enough to get through the drought.
Cultivation:-
You must remove the weeds around the young oil palms. This work is done with a hoe or a machete. During the first year, cultivate 6 times. Remove all the weeds for 2 meters around each stem. During the first months, the weeds between rows have to be cut. If you leave the weeds, the cover crop will not grow well.
Trimming the Plants:-
You must always cut away the dry leaves of the oil palm. In order to cut the leaves without damage to the oil palm, your tools must be well sharpened. Cut the leaves very close to the stem, so that no other plants can grow in the axil of the cut-off leaves. Remove from the trunk any plants (ferns) that may grow in the axils of the leaves. Remove also the male flowers.
Applying Fertilizer:-
The oil palm needs a lot of mineral salts to form its leaves and fruit clusters. When the oil palm is young, it needs above all nitrogen. When the oil palm has begun to produce, it needs a lot of potash. Potash increases the number of fruit clusters, and makes them bigger.
Protect against insects:-
Rhinoceros, Augosome beetles & Strategus beetle attack Palm. To protect the young trees, put in the axil of the leaves a mixture of sawdust and BHC.
Palm weevil (Rhynchophora)
To avoid dangerous attacks, be very careful not to wound the trees. The insects may lay their eggs in the wounds of the oil palm. There are other insects, but it is difficult for the grower to control them.
Oil palms may also be attacked by rats and agoutis. Rats and agoutis can eat young oil palms. Protect your young oil palms against agoutis by wire netting round each tree. As a protection against rats, you can place little bags with poisoned maize near the oil palms.
Harvesting:-
Harvesting needs much time and much care, because only those fruit clusters which are cut at the right moment yield a lot of good-quality oil.
You must go through the plantation many times to pick the ripe clusters.
A cluster is ripe for harvesting when the fruits begin to turn red, and when 5 or 6 fruits drop to the ground. If you wait too long before harvesting the clusters, harvesting takes much more time, because you must pick up all the fruits that have dropped to the ground. The fruits will also yield less oil, and the oil will be of less good quality.
If you do not wait long enough before harvesting the clusters, the fruit will not be ripe enough. It will be more difficult to separate the fruits from the clusters and the clusters will yield less oil.
The clusters can be cut off with different tools.
For oil palms 4 to 7 years old:
Cut the clusters with a chisel. Slip the chisel between the stem and the leaf; in this way you can cut off the cluster without cutting the leaf below it.
For oil palms 7 to 12 years old:
Cut the clusters with a machete. If the clusters are too high up, climb up the tree by putting your feet on the base of the leaves.
For oil palms older than 12 years:
Cut the clusters with a long-armed sickle. If the clusters are too high up to be cut with the long armed sickle, use bamboo ladders, or else climb up also be picked up. Tree with a belt; you can also wear spiked shoes. Any clusters that have dropped the to the ground should be collected in a basket.
By:
Sohaib Hassan
MPhil Agri Agronomy
7/22/2019
Sohaib Hassan
MPhil Agri Agronomy
7/22/2019