Preliminary assessment on drought tolerance of oil palm in semi-arid area

Evaluating oil palm growth performance and their corresponding effect on drought is crucial for proper parental selection. The parent palm that has drought tolerance characteristics has less affect on oil yield production, thus, highly potential as future planting material for dry region areas. A study using split-plot with four replications in a randomized complete block design (RCBD) was conducted. All 19 progenies were evaluated and interaction effects were estimated using split-plots analysis. Among all progenies, PB29 showed the highest average production in terms of vegetative growth and oil yield. This was clearly seen on the first year of harvesting (2017), where fresh fruit bunch (FFB) of PB29 was reaching 12.42 t/ha, while in the second year of harvesting (2018), showed increment of 5 t/ha, with a total annual FFB yield of about 17.94 t/ha. Drought tolerance trait is a major improvement if it can be incorporated into new planting material of oil palm. It can widen the range of suitable land selection for plantation thus increasing the possibility to expend oil palm in marginal regime areas. The new breed must possess two characteristics which are, the ability to tolerate a drought condition as well as excessive water supply (seasonal climate), and produce high oil yield.