Last Tuesday, Sime Darby Bhd announced amidst much fanfare and pomp, in the presence of the prime minister, that it had successfully sequenced, assembled and annotated the oil palm genome with 93.8% completeness, making it the first to do so. It sequenced the Tenera variety of oil palm.

This will enable the identification of several markers in the oil palm genome to breed new varieties of oil palm whereby scientists will be able to control the tree’s height, oil yield, iodine level, length of stalks, drought tolerance, salinity and disease resistance. The company believes the breakthrough will lead to crops with the potential to double yields.

“The information from the genome is used to generate markers, which means that at the seedling stage, we can select the top performing palms. Our breeders can actually do more speculative crosses that would normally take 30 years before you can get them to homogeneity, where we can select the top performers from the seedling stage and plant them. In terms of timeline, we already have populations that we can start pulling out, not in significant numbers but it will happen progressively,” Dr K Harikrishna, Quantum Leap R&D head, Sime Darby R&D Centre, explains.   

Sime Darby told the media that it will now move on to the next phase of research within the next six months to work on producing designer seedlings and introducing new planting material, based on its genome research, to the field by 2014 and will eventually replace all the palms in the field with these new materials in 30 years at a replanting rate of 4% per year. Sime Darby has a plantation landbank of more than 0.6 million hectares in Malaysia and Indonesia, most of which have been planted.

“The beauty about this is you’re not increasing the acreage, you’re multiplying it on the existing acreage and you can make and design the palm to suit the various climatic and soil condition as well as terrain,” says Datuk Seri Ahmad Zubir Murshid, Sime Darby’s president and group chief executive.

With the emergence of designer oil palms, Sime Darby believes the industry will be able to address the myriad of issues it is facing such as the food versus fuel debate, labour shortage and climate change.

The project is a collaborative effort between Sime Darby Technology Centre and Synamatix Sdn Bhd, a bio-informatics company. As a result of the success in genome sequencing, the group has set up Sime Darby Genomics Sdn Bhd, headed by Harikrishna, to undertake the management of intellectual property (IP) value creation and commercialisation of the IPs generated. The company is guided by a Scientific Advisory Board chaired by Professor Anthony J Sinskey of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Zubir explains that the project started in 2003, during the “old Sime Darby days” when it decided to go into biotechnology to create more productive and disease-resistant oil palm. The sequencing of the oil palm genome was completed in March this year. To date, Sime Darby has spent RM40 million on the project and it will spend another RM100 million over the next four to five years.

Ahead in the race for the super palm is Asiatic Development Bhd’s wholly-owned subsidiary, Asiatic Centre for Genome Technology Sdn Bhd (ACGT), which began conducting research on the oil palm genome in 2006 at its research facility in Technology Park Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur.

In fact, Derrik Khoo Sin Huat, the CEO of ACGT, says the company completed the sequencing, assembling and annotation of not one but two varieties of the oil palm genome — the Dura and the Tenera — with 98% coverage in December 2008. However, ACGT kept its achievement secret although it had announced the completion of the first draft assembly and annotation of the oil palm genome in May 2008. When asked why it didn’t announce its latest achievement, Khoo says ACGT prefers to keep a low profile on its progress.

“ACGT is now in the application phase, which involves making use of our genome data for product development. We have mined DNA markers from our genome data and are using them to eventually produce superior planting materials,” he tells The Edge.  

Khoo adds that ACGT is also characterising important microbes living in environments around the oil palm. For both its genome and metagenomics research, the company is collaborating with Synthetic Genomics Inc, founded by Dr J Craig Venter. ACGT is also collaborating with the Malaysian Palm Oil Board to conduct research on increasing fruit yield and quality using the oil palm genome. To-date, the company has spent RM70 million on genome research.

Khoo says he is pleased that a giant like Sime Darby recognises the importance of genomics as a way of moving forward, which is positive for the palm oil industry.

“I’m sure there’ll be opportunities to work together. ACGT plans to work with every plantation company in Malaysia. The key is, everybody wins,” he adds.

Indeed, Sime’s Zubir says the company would like to share its findings with the industry for the benefit of all.

“I don’t think there’s a winner or loser here.. At the end of the day, it’s the industry that wins,” says Harikrishna when asked who won the race to sequence the oil palm genome.

The race for a super tree is part of efforts to lift Malaysian oil palm yields, which have been stagnating over the last 20-odd years. In 2003, Datuk Seri Dr Lim Keng Yaik, then the minister of primary industries, set a target for the palm oil industry to produce at least eight tonnes of oil per hectare by producing 35 tonnes of fresh fruit bunches (FFB) per hectare per year with an oil extraction rate (OER) of 25%. This works out to an oil yield of 8.75 tonnes per hectare. Last year, the sector achieved average FFB yield of 20.18 tonnes per hectare and OER of 20.21%.

“With genomic-based solutions, we have an opportunity to achieve these targets. Without them, we’ll still be where we are today. The industry will need cutting-edge technology to achieve quantum leaps in efficiency and productivity,” Khoo opines.

Industry players are positive on the work done on the oil palm genome, although quality planting material is just part of the equation in obtaining high yields. Datuk Carl Bek-Nielsen, vice-chairman/executive director (corporate affairs) of United Plantations Bhd, views the breakthrough in oil palm genome research as a step in the right direction and commends Sime for its efforts. But he adds that having a disciplined and competent management is also important, without which great materials will not be able to perform.

“We must not forget that there are planting materials available today which can enable companies to obtain yields of 7.5 to 8 tonnes of CPO per hectare realistically; forget the 10 tonnes per hectare average for large plantation groups, this is simply all hype and figures prepared by technocrats who have no pragmatic understanding of operations on a large scale in the field. Today, in spite of the availability of high yielding planting materials in Malaysia produced by Sime, Felda, AAR, IOI, United Plantations, there are only a handful of companies which manage to obtain a group average yield above six tonnes of CPO per hectare,” he says via email.

Bek-Nielsen points out that United Plantations achieved the highest average yield of 6.38 tonnes of CPO per hectare in Malaysia last year, followed closely by IOI Corp Bhd.  

While positive on the achievement in sequencing the oil palm genome, he believes it will be another 10 to 15 years before tangible results are seen in the field.

In the meantime, the race to produce the super palm continues.

This article appeared in Corporate page of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 755, May 18-24, 2009