PALM OIL SLUDGE[ELAEIS GUINEENSIS]

Listing description

Elaeis guineensis is a species of palm commonly called African oil palm or macaw-fat.^[2] It is the principal source of palm oil. It is native to west and southwest Africa, specifically the area between Angola and the Gambia; the species name guineensis refers to the name for the area, Guinea, and not the modern country which now bears that name.

Detailed description

The species is also now naturalised in Madagascar, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Sumatra, Central America, the West Indies and several islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. The closely related American oil palm Elaeis oleifera and a more distantly related palm, Attalea maripa, are also used to produce palm oil.
Human use of oil palms may date as far back as 5,000 years in West Africa; in the late 1800s, archaeologists discovered palm oil in a tomb at Abydos dating back to 3,000 BCE.^[3] It is thought that Arab traders brought the oil palm to Egypt.^[4]

Description

Mature palms are single-stemmed and grow to 20 m tall. The leaves are pinnate and reach between 3-5 m long. A young palm produces about 30 leaves a year. Established palms over 10 years produce about 20 leaves a year. The flowers are produced in dense clusters; each individual flower is small, with three sepals and three petals.
The palm fruit takes five to six months to mature from pollination to maturity. It is reddish, about the size of a large plum, and grows in large bunches. Each fruit is made up of an oily, fleshy outer layer (the pericarp), with a single seed (the palm kernel), also rich in oil. When ripe, each bunch of fruit weighs 40–50 kg (88–110 lb).

Planting

For each hectare of oil palm, which is harvested year-round, the annual production averages 10 tonnes^{[citation needed]} of fruit yielding 4,000 kg of palm oil and 750 kg^{[citation needed]} of seed kernels yielding 500 kg of high quality palm kernel oil, as well as 600 kg of kernel meal. Palm fronds and kernel meal are processed for use as livestock feed.^[5]
All modern, commercial planting material consists of tenera palms or DxP hybrids, which are obtained by crossing thickshelled dura with shell-less pisifera. Although common commercial germinated seed is as thick-shelled as the dura mother palm, the resulting palm will produce thin-shelled tenera fruit. An alternative to germinated seed, once constraints to mass production are overcome, are tissue-cultured or "clonal" palms, which provide "true copies" of high-yielding DxP palms.
An oil palm nursery must have an uninterrupted supply of clean water and topsoil which is both well-structured and sufficiently deep to accommodate three rounds of on-site bag-filling. Approximately 35 ha can grow enough seedlings over a three-year period to plant a 5,000-ha plantation. Prenursery seedlings must be watered daily. Whenever rainfall is less than 10 mm per day, irrigation is required, and the system must be capable of uniformly applying 6.5 mm water per day.
Prenursery seedlings in the four-leaf stage of development (10 to 14 weeks after planting) are usually transplanted to the main nursery after their gradual adjustment to full sunlight and a rigid selection process. During culling, seedlings that have grassy, crinkled, twisted, or rolled leaves are discarded.
Weeds growing in the polybags must be carefully pulled out. Herbicides should not be used. Numerous insects (ants, armyworms, bagworms, aphids, thrips, mites, grasshoppers, and mealybugs) and vertebrates (rats, squirrels, porcupines, wild boar, and monkeys) are pests in oil palm nurseries and must be carefully identified before control measures are implemented.
After eight months in the nursery, normal healthy plants should be 0.8–1 m in height and display five to eight functional leaves.
The proper approach to oil palm development begins with the establishment of leguminous cover plants, immediately following land clearing. They help prevent soil erosion and surface run-off, improve soil structure and palm root development, increase the response to mineral fertilizer in later years, and reduce the danger of micronutrient deficiencies. Leguminous cover plants also help prevent outbreaks of Oryctes beetles, which nest in exposed decomposing vegetation. Both phosphorus and potassium fertilizers are needed to maximize the leguminous cover plants' symbiotic nitrogen-fixation potential of approximately 200 kg nitrogen/ha/yr, and are applied to most soils at 115 to 300 kg phosphorus oxide/ha and 35 to 60 kg potassium oxide/ha. Young palms are severely set back where grasses are allowed to dominate the inter-row vegetation, particularly on poor soils where the correction of nutrient deficiencies is difficult and costly.

Crop nutrient

Nutrient uptake is low during the first year but increases steeply between year one and year three (when harvesting commences) and stabilizes around years five to six. Early applications of fertilizer, better planting material, and more rigid culling have led to a dramatic increase in early yields in the third to sixth years from time of planting. In regions without a significant drop in rainfall, yields of over 25 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches per hectare have been achieved in the second year of harvesting.
Nitrogen deficiency is usually associated with conditions of water-logging, heavy weed infestation, and topsoil erosion. Symptoms are a general paling and stiffening of the pinnae, which lose their glossy lustre. Extended deficiency will reduce the number of effective fruit bunches produced, as well as the bunch size.
Phosphorus-deficient leaves do not show specific symptoms, but frond length, bunch size, and trunk diameter are all reduced.
Potassium deficiency is very common and is the major yield constraint in sandy or peaty soils. The most frequent symptom is "confluent orange spotting". Pale green spots appear on the pinnae of older leaves; as the deficiency intensifies, the spots turn orange or reddish-orange and desiccation sets in, starting from the tips and outer margins of the pinnae. Other symptoms are "orange blotch" and "midcrown yellowing". In soils having a low water-holding capacity (sands and peats), potassium deficiency can lead to a rapid, premature desiccation of fronds.
Copper deficiency is common on deep peat soils and occurs also on very sandy soils. It appears initially as whitish-yellow mottling of younger fronds. As the deficiency intensifies, yellow, mottled, interveinal stripes appear, and rusty, brown spots develop on the distal ends of leaflets. Affected fronds and leaflets are stunted and leaflets dry up. On sandy soils, palms recover rapidly after a basal application of 50 grams of copper sulphate. On peat soils, lasting correction of copper deficiency is difficult, as applied copper sulphate is rendered unavailable. A promising method of correcting copper deficiency on peat soil is to mix copper sulphate with clay soil and to form tennis-ball sized "copper mudballs" that are placed around the palm to provide a slow-release source of available copper.
Healthy, well selected seedlings are necessary for early and sustained high yield. In most cases, granular multinutrient compound fertilizers are the preferred nutrient source for seedlings in the nursery. Where subsoil is used to fill the polybags, extra dressings of Kieserite may be required (10-15 g every six to eight weeks). Where compound fertilizers are not available, equivalent quantities of straight materials should be used.
To maintain good fertilizer response and high yields in older palms, selective thinning is often necessary.

PRICE

$320/MT OR $0.32/KG OR $0.14/IB

For more information:

mobile: +2348039721941

contact person: emeaba uche

e-mail: emeabau@yahoo.com

website: www.franchiseminerals.com