Best Management Practice for Maximum Economic Yield in Oil Palm

Despite advances in yield improvement knowledge over the years, overall yield in the oil palm industry in Indonesia and Malaysia have remained low. Total palm oil production has increased more from new land coming into production than higher yields from existing plantings. Sub-optimal yields in existing plantations may be corrected with an approach that provides decision-support information to bridge the gap between research advances and current practices.

The IPNI Southeast Asia Program has been instrumental in developing a Best Management Practice (BMP) concept for yield intensification in oil palm. This concept was successfully evaluated in existing mature stands at PT Asiatic Persada, Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia, in 2001 to 2005, and subsequently introduced at larger scale in several other estates of Pacific Rim Palm Oil Limited (now under the CTP Holdings group) in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

In 2006, IPNI and its partners launched a new BMP program to evaluate the concept at wider scale through six collaborative projects in Indonesia. The six project sites span a wide range of environments where oil palms are currently grown in Indonesia. The collaborating plantations also represent a range in terms of ownership, management, size of operations & ‘pedigree’ (i.e. history of involvement in the plantation business). IPNI assists its collaborating plantations with training, and agronomic and economic data analysis.

With this new BMP program, IPNI promotes the evaluation of BMP as a management tool in mature plantations, where a set of site-specific BMPs are implemented in a number of full-size management blocks representative for the estate(s) to collect evidence on the agronomic, economic, and environmental performance of the chosen BMPs.

Using BMP as a management tool helps plantations in identifying opportunities and developing strategies to implement practices for yield intensification, and decisions on larger investments in BMP are based on practical, commercial-scale evidence.

Specific objectives at the estate level are

1. To enhance yield and profitability, the effective use of inputs including fertilizer, and soil quality of intensively managed oil palm production systems through best management practices.
2. To assist planters in the identification, evaluation, and implementation of improved management practices for building yield and reducing losses.
3. To meet site-specific needs and explore opportunities for enhanced productivity, profitability, and sustainability while meeting acceptable environmental standards.
4. To identify and propagate approaches for integrated crop and nutrient management for effective and efficient input use.