Expert seeks increased research to boost oil palm seedlings

An agriculture expert, Mr Akin Alabi, has called for increased research to boost oil seedlings for enhanced productivity and growth.

Alabi, the Co-founder of Corporate Farmers International, made the call in an interview with our correspondent on Thursday in Lagos.

He stated that Nigeria should develop improved seedlings to increase the sector’s capacity to stop the importation of palm oil into the country.

“We need improved seedlings to boost oil palm cultivation in Nigeria.

“We need to encourage our research institutes to do more, we have a lot of agricultural institutes that we can work with to develop improved oil palm seedlings.

“We should engage, motivate and task them to see what are the yielding seedlings that are resilient to climate change.

“We must invest more and develop our agricultural research institutes to create premium seeds around oil palm cultivation and production,” he said.

According to him, when this is done and distributed across board, it will be easier for farmers to pick cultivated premium oil palm seeds, yield increased productivity levels and great output at harvest time.

The co-founder noted that decades ago, Malaysia improved on the oil palm seedlings from Nigeria, which was the reason for the country’s increased productivity output.

He urged Nigeria to return to research to produce improved seedlings to boost the growth of the palm sector.

“This is what we did when we handed our oil palm seedlings to Malaysia some years ago, and now it has improved variants, yielding greater returns.

“Our seeds are better than that of Malaysia but today the country is at the top in oil palm production globally because it went the extra mile to improve on what we gave them.

“However, that does not mean that we cannot take back our place as highest producer of oil palm if we return to our drawing boards and increase our research efforts,” he said.

Alabi added that Nigeria would become a giant again in exports with improvement in oil production and processing techniques.