Seven decades of research on oil palm in India

Oil palm, (Elaeis guineensis Jacq) is one of the important commercial plantation crops, originated from West Africa spread to South East Asia especially Malaysia and Indonesia. Oil palm contributes about 40% of the global vegetable oil sector in the world and Palm oil is the main consumer product mostly in Asia, and also has a wide range of important nonfood uses. It is cultivated in about 43 countries in an area of about 19.0 million ha producing about 77.05 million tons of palm oil and 7.840 million tons of palm kernel oil as of 2020 of which Indonesia and Malaysia occupying the first and second place having the largest share in production with 45.5 and 19.0 million tons of palm oil, respectively. As the crop has spread length and breadth across the globe, research also has flourished in many oil palm growing countries especially in South East Asia,Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand. Research on oil palm was initiated in India during 1960 at Thodupuzha and crop improvement research started during 1975 at Palode Centre of ICAR. National Research Centre for Oil Palm (NRCOP) was established at Pedavegi, Andhra Pradesh in 1995 and was upgraded to the ICAR-Indian Institute of oil palm Research (ICAR-IIOPR) during the year 2014. Though oil palm research in India is in the young stage with a modest area of 337,000 ha (2019–20), useful technologies have been developed in the areas of genetic resource management, molecular biology, biotechnology, plant health management, post-harvest technologies, transfer of technologies and ICT applications. Some of the important research breakthroughs in India include 1. Introduction of seeds of dura, tenera, and dura × tenera materials to Thodupuzha from Malaysia and hybrid seed production utilizing progeny tested Thodupuzha dura and NIFOR pisifera.; 2. Collection of wild and semi-wild oil palm germplasm from Cameroon, Tanzania, Zambia, and Guinea Bissau under the FAO program and utilization of selected palms for hybrid seed production and seed gardens.; 3. Three oil palm hybrids namely, Godavari Swarna, (Andhra Pradesh), Godavari Ratna (Coastal region of Maharashtra and Goa), and Godavari Gold (Coastal Tamil Nadu) with high FFB yield, palm oil, and sex ratio were recommended for release through CVRC/SVRC.; 4. Twenty accessions of germplasm viz., Sierra Leone, and Senegal were introduced from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) under International Collaborative Research Project;5. Two patents namely, insect facilitated controlled pollination and ablation tool were granted to IIOPR,; 6. One cleaved amplified polymorphic site (CAPS) marker was identified to differentiate oil palm fruits forms and 7. A web application, opSatdb microsatellite database of oil palm has been developed for effective use for various genomic applications of oil palm. Over 25 years, several technologies/methodologies were developed in India which is summarized in this research paper and plans are suggested for further improvement.