Contact

Alain Rival
Oil Palm Supply Chain Correspondent
Montpellier, France
E-mail

Oil palm

Oil palm is the world's leading oil crop, and is a vital importance for many tropical countries. With some 42 million tonnes produced in 2008, it accounts for more than a third of global vegetable oil production. Its rapid expansion is raising new issues for research, in the fields of agro-ecology, biodiversity management, and human sciences.

The issues

  • Satisfying growing demand for edible fats in the South, as a result of population growth and improved living standards in emerging countries.
  • Ensuring the sustainable, responsible development of a supply chain that respects both the environment and the rights of local people; anticipating on and supporting the recommendations of the RSPO (Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil).
  • Improving the productivity of the crop and promoting its by-products, by creating the conditions for ecological intensification.

CIRAD's role

  • Crating the oil palms of the future, both high-yielding and resistant to the main diseases (Fusarium wilt, Ganoderma and bud rots).
  • Understanding and modelling oil palm physiological functioning, to anticipate on the impacts of climate change.
  • Studying the environmental and social impact of extending or renewing plantations.
  • Intensifying production systems through rational plantation management centring on the use of agro-environmental indicators.
  • Optimizing oil palm fruit postharvest processing and making use (biomass, energy) of the by-products of oil extraction.
Update date: 25/11/2010