Tissue Cultured Material

SEU is entering the biotechnology field with the construction of a tissue culture laboratory underway. Tissue culture enables replication of individual high performing palm in large scale and shorter time. Tissue culture ensures that ramets (offspring) produced are identical to that of the original palm. Trait such as higher oil/bunch is highly heritable and transferable to the next generation. An improvement of 20 – 30% oil yield can be expected over the conventional DxP planting material. However, many current tissue culture producers face problems with mantling where hermaphrodite fruits are produced. The cloning protocol for oil palm needs to be perfected prior to mass replication. Subsequently, genetic engineering can be applied to improve oil characteristics such as higher carotene, tocopherol, tocotrienol, olein synthesis etc.