SINGAPORE – 7 October 2008 – Sumatra Bioscience, a subsidiary of PT PP London Sumatra Indonesia Tbk (Lonsum), today announced that it has developed the first process to produce F1 hybrid oil palm seeds. An F1 hybrid oil palm seed is a first generation offspring of two distinctly different genetically uniform oil palms, each with two identical sets of chromosomes.
The process, which involved no genetic modification, will enable the company to produce F1 oil palm hybrids that are expected to more than triple conventional yield. This is based on historic yields from other F1 hybrid crops such as corn (maize), which annual yield has increased six folds since the early 1930s. Today, approximately 95% of corn crops in the United States are grown from F1 hybrid seeds. F1 hybrids have also been achieved in many other crops such as oil seed rape, sunflower, sugar beet and rice, as well as in fruits, vegetables and ornamental plants.
However, there has been little progress with oil palms until now principally due to the lack of any method to produce homozygous, or genetically uniform, oil palms. This is because commonly used methods to produce homozygous lines in other crops were not feasible with oil palms as a result of its breeding system and long generation time.
The development of F1 oil palm hybrids will benefit the world and the environment greatly because of their ability to generate higher yields, which will result in less land being needed for crop cultivation. It could also help alleviate the escalating global food shortage crisis. According to World Bank’s estimation, the global demand for food is expected to double by 2030, while world’s population is expected to grow by another three billion by 2050.
