Abstract: Since 2000, oil palm cultivation has generated considerable controversy: more than 20 million ha of plantations have been linked with deforestation, burning, a high carbon footprint, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution from the palm oil industry. The effects of palm oil on human health have also been critiqued, with palm oil being used in various fast foods and iconic products such as doughnuts and Nutella. Despite these concerns, the high continuous fruit production (>35 t FFB/ha) and high oil yield (>28% of extraction rate) of oil palm make it a cheap and high-quality resource for the increasing global demand for edible oil. Thus, the oil palm chain, from planters to industry, has sought to improve the environmental impacts of oil palm and engaged the R&D sector to minimize the negative impacts of oil palm production. Under pressure from environmental lobbyists, such as WWF, there have been environmental improvements due to the establishment of international obligations for planters to obtain eco-certification (i.e. RSPO Round Table for Palm Oil) and the preference of buyers to purchase “green oil” with certified origin. At the same time, the development of genomics and transcriptomics technologies for oil palm since 2013 has allowed researchers to select varieties with a high yield potential (along with markers for other desirable traits such as drought tolerance, pathogen resistance, and oil composition) and then restrict new planting extension by reducing local yield gaps. Recently, oil palm agronomists have focused on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from plantations by modifying fertilizer use, especially the addition of potassium (KCl: until 300 kg/ha/year) which is commonly used to increase fruit production. Recent metabolomics and proteomics studies have highlighted the potential of using oil palm metabolism data to improve fertilizer efficiency management. A better definition of the nutritional status of individual trees is required to optimize the mineral diagnosis system, which is used to manage fertilizer applications in plantations, and “-omics” tools, in addition to mineral data represent a great potential solution. I will present the latest evolution in this sector, as well as the new evolution of cropping systems research based on oil palm.

Biography: Emmanuelle Lamade is working as agro-physiologist, at CIRAD (in Montpellier, France; CIRAD is the plant French agricultural research and international cooperation organization working for the sustainable development of tropical and Mediterranean regions) in the oil palm tropical value chain, and belongs to the UMR ABSys (Mixte Research Unit “Biodiversified Agrosystem”). Emmanuelle got her PhD in Plant Ecology at the University of Paris-Saclay (Paris, France), did a postdoc in Plant Modelling at Wageningen University in The Netherlands, and completed her skills in Farming System Research in Tanzania with the International Agriculture Centre (Wageningen, The Netherlands). She worked overseas in oil palm plantations with private industrial groups and national research centres (INRAB, IOPRI, EMBRAPA), in collaboration with local staff and workers in Benin, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Brazil. Her recent focus is to develop new physiological diagnostic tools for sustainable mineral nutrition management.