They make millions of babies and sell them

NG WOO Jian fans a bunch of plumes that looked like a giant feather
duster at a crowd before him at Paloh oil palm estate in Johor. A whiff
of fragrant scent wafts through the air.

John Low, the
Performance Management And Delivery Unit (Pemandu) director of
agriculture, palm oil and rubber projects, who was among the crowd of
visitors, takes a closer sniff.

"It smells like five spice powder."

"That, my friends, is the smell of male pollens from the oil palm
tree," Ng said. He shakes the plumes at the crowd again. With a knowing
smile, he said, "And now, I'm going to show you how we make millions of
babies at our secret garden."

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At Applied Agricultural Resources Sdn Bhd (AAR), seed production
manager Ng and his team diligently work on thousands of mother palms to
perfect Malaysia's top cash crop with the latest breeding know-how.

Just
as Ng ushers the crowd to a mother palm, a research assistant propels
herself up the tree by stepping on a fish-bone ladder resting on its
trunk.

She then hoists and straddles herself unto one of the palm
fronds with a safety harness fastened to another frond. She proceeded
to slip a plastic bag over a flowering bunch, seal it tightly with a
double knot and hand puffs the desired male pollens into the bag.

Ng
said, "The plastic bag cover prevents weevils from reaching the
nice-smelling female flowers and accidentally pollinating it with other
male pollens we do not want."

"When we choose to breed the Dura X
Pisifera (DXP) specie, we don't want any 'anak luar nikah'. So, in this
instance, the bag behaves like a condom," he added.

In the
last 50 years, crop scientists have been breeding the DXP hybrid because
this specie is able to bear very big fruit bunches. As time goes by,
many oil palm planters affectionately refer the DXP hybrid as "the Dolly
Parton type" because like its namesake yields voluptuous fruit bunches.

Today, Malaysia's five million hectares of oil palm landscape is populated by the Dolly Parton standard planting materials.

Meanwhile, back at Ijok, Selangor, AAR owns the world's largest oil
palm tissue culture laboratory. The facility at Tuan Mee estate produces
1.5 million clonal palms per year.

In a separate interview with
Business Times, Boustead Holdings Bhd deputy chairman and group managing
director Tan Sri Lodin Wok Kamaruddin said: "Through such painstaking
research and development effort initiated decades ago, we can now reap
the benefits of high yielding clonal palms."

"This is how Malaysia is able to feed the world with more cooking oil, and at the same time, safeguard biodiversity," he said.

Boustead,
the flagship investment arm of the Armed Forces Pension Fund (Lembaga
Tabung Angkatan Tentera), jointly owns AAR with Kuala Lumpur Kepong Bhd.

In response to a growing world population in the next decade, Lodin
noted the need to produce more food on the same piece of land.


"I'm convinced that we can meet the future of the world's cooking oil
needs by developing better oil palm seeds and planting methods. These
are all linked to sustainable agriculture," he said.

Since
1986, AAR and other seed producers in the country have been contributing
to the replanting of unproductive trees, so as to raise the national
oil palm yield. Through biotechnology advancement, they are able to
increase yield and improve disease resistance.

In the 1960s,
Lodin explained, the mindset was to keep superior planting materials for
local oil palm planters. Fifty years on, the global scenario has
changed.

"The time has come for us to leverage on uncharted
potentials outside Malaysia. If we don't liberalise now, we'll be left
behind," he said.

Lodin highlighted that oil palm seed exports
can be a significant income earner for the country as it fetches a 50
per cent premium in the overseas market.

In total, the Malaysian
Palm Oil Board (MPOB) statistics show seed companies churn out some 80
million oil palm seeds every year, of which 50 million are supplied to
local planters. The remaining 30 million are sold to Malaysian planters
with oil palm estates abroad.

Established seed producers like AAR reserved a sizable portion of seeds for smallholders in Malaysia, but they face a dilemma.

Oil palm seeds only has a shelf life of two years. If not sold within
that time span, they have to be destroyed. This wastage is especially
evident when high palm oil prices cause local planters to delay
replanting activities and therefore, their purchase of germinated seeds.

"Apart from waiver of export restriction on seeds sales, we also hope
to see MPOB rope in seed producers from the private sector when sourcing
for new genetic materials from West Africa and Latin America for seed
breeding," Lodin said, adding that such measures would help propel
Malaysia to become the world's trading hub for superior oil palm seeds.