Loglinear modeling of the “duster” condition in the African oil palm in Colombia

Abstract

A new physiopathy in oil palms that has been called "duster" for which at present no causal agent is known, is gaining interest in agronomic research. In 2015 we carried out a count of reproductive structures to evaluate the severity in genetic materials of three different origins in a plantation in Colombia. The aim was to determine the possible relationships between disorder and the presence of reproductive structures . For the data analysis a cluster analysis was performed and then we assessed the relative risk between the state of the disorder, the origin and structures of the plant and we applied a log-linear model to study the dependence between variables classified in clusters: palms showing high fruiting and grouped with low fruiting. We observed that fruiting was not statistically related to the presence of physiopathy. We also observed that Brabanta origin were the least susceptible and showed the best fruiting.