Oil Palm and Coconut

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Coconut and oil palm are the two important plantation crops grown in the wet tropics. Both the palms are monocots and produce oil from their fruits. Oil palm currently occupies the topmost position in the international vegetable oil market, while coconut is a palm with diverse uses in addition to being an oil crop. Out of the two palms, oil palm has shown a spectacular boom in the world oil trade during the last 60 years. Systematic genetic improvement programmes of both these palms have been carried out since the first quarter of the last century due to the importance of oil palm and coconut. Oil palm and coconut share much similar challenges in their genetic improvement for better traits owing both of these being perennial monocot palms of massive stature, cross-pollinating heterogeneous populations and certain other genetic implications. Despite these inherent constraints, considerable gains have been achieved in the breeding of both oil palm and coconut through the transfer of desirable genes from diverse sources into the cultivated material. African oil palm populations have been most important in transfer of genes from populations of different origins. In addition, interspecific hybridization between African and American oil palms has also been carried out with success. Similarly, in coconut, much advancement has been made with respect to yield components, precocity and shorter stature using intervarietal and interpopulation gene transfer methods. These gene transfer methods have helped to bring oil palm to the topmost position in the world oil trade and coconut to provide vegetable oil and livelihoods to millions of people in the coconut-growing countries.