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Breakthrough for Global Oil Palm Industry
UK - The University of Reading, working with Sumatra Bioscience, BioHybrids International Limited, and the University of Aberystwyth, has made a major breakthrough in oil palm yield.Professor Jim Dunwell, Professor of Plant Biotechnology in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading, said: "This collaborative research has developed the world's first process to produce F1 oil palm hybrid varieties and is potentially the most significant breakthrough in plant breeding in the last 50 years."
Palm oil is the most productive of all oil crops with the highest yield per unit area. It is the main source of oil in South East Asia and is used widely in foods and industrial lubricants. In the UK it is found in around 10% of all food products stocked on supermarket shelves.
The impact of the production of palm oil in South East Asia is a major source of concern, with regard to de-forestation and its contribution to global warming.
Jim Dunwell said "Working on behalf of Sumatra Bioscience, a subsidiary of PT PP London Sumatra Indonesia Tbk (Lonsum), this research will have huge ramifications for increasing yields per unit area of land. It will reduce the pressure to use more land in South East Asia for oil palm cultivation as a greater yield can be achieved from the existing area under cultivation. It could also help alleviate the escalating global food shortage crisis, have a positive impact on increasing biofuel production and have knock-on benefits for the environment."
An F1 oil palm seed is a first generation offspring of two distinctly different genetically uniform oil palms, each with two identical sets of chromosomes. The process, which involved no genetic modification, will enable Sumatra Bioscience to produce F1 oil palm hybrids that are expected to more than triple conventional yield.
The process to produce F1 oil palm hybrids involves the following steps:
- Identifying rare, naturally occurring haploid¹ and double haploid oil palm seedlings through screening from which true-breeding parent plants can be produced
- Doubling naturally occurring haploids
- Crossing superior homozygous doubled haploids to produce F1 oil palm hybrids.
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