Oil Palm Breeding in the Modern Era: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Oil palm, a cross-pollinated crop with long generation time, poses a lot of challenges in achieving sustainable oil palm with high yield and quality. The African oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is the most productive and versatile oil-yielding crop in the world, producing more than any other oil-yielding crop. Despite recent challenges, such as stress tolerance, superior oil quality, disease tolerance, and the need for new market niches, there is a growing need to explore and develop new varieties with high yield potential and the genetic diversity required to maintain oil palm yield stability. Breeding is an indispensable part of producing high-quality planting materials to increase oil palm yield. Biotechnological technologies have transformed conventional plant breeding approaches by introducing novel genotypes for breeding. Innovative pre-breeding and breeding approaches, such as identifying candidate genes in wild or land races using genomics tools, can pave the way for genetic improvement in oil palm. In this review, we highlighted the modern breeding tools, including genomics, marker-assisted breeding, genetic engineering, and genome editing techniques in oil palm crops, and we explored certain concerns connected to the techniques and their applications in practical breeding.