IJAER

International Journal of Agriculture and Environmental Research™

ISSN 2455-6939

Title:
IMPACT OF EL NINO AND LA NINA ON OIL PALM FFB YIELD PRODUCTION IN MALAYSIA

Authors:
Haniff M.H., Zuraidah Yahya, Afifah Abdul Razak, Jusoh Latif, M. Ayatollah Khomeini A Rahman and Norman Kamarudin

Abstract:
The oil palm being a rain-fed crop, its yield could be influenced by any severe changes in the rain intensity and/or its distribution. Some important environmental stresses such as drought or extreme rainfall could have a great impact on the crop productivity. The intensity will depend on the severity, duration and time of stress in relation to the oil palm crop phenology. The sensitive stages of growth towards stresses are during the initial inflorescence and fruit development stages. This paper investigates the relationships between rainfall and FFB yield production in three different regions in Malaysia. Results show that oil palm FFB yield was affected by the low rainfall during severe El Nino events and excessive rainfall during La Nina events. However, the severity of an El Nino event is largely determined by the number of months with less than 100 mm rainfall, which has been very low since 2007. The reduction in FFB yield from the recent weak or moderate El Nino events was minimal. The FFB yield during the strong El Nino event in 2015was slightly reduced by 0.8% to 18.48 t ha-1 yr-1 from 18.63 t ha-1 yr-1 in 2014. Sabah had a decline of 6.3% to 19.99 t ha-1 yr-1 as compared to 21.34 t ha-1 yr-1 in the previous year. However, Peninsula and Sarawak recorded increases in FFB yield, where Peninsula improved by 3.0% to 18.77 t ha-1 yr-1 , while Sarawak increased slightly by 0.5% to 16.21 t ha-1 yr-1 . Low FFB yield was significantly correlated with high rainfall events after 5- or 6-month lag intervals and could be strongly linked to poor fruit set. There was a significant reduction in FFB yield at the16-month lag interval after high rainfall event (? 200 mm month-1 ) compared to low rainfall event (< 200 mm month-1 ) that could be attributed to high abortion rate and low sex ratio. The observed increase in FFB yields at the lag intervals of10-monthafter high rainfall event and 12-month after low rainfall event could probably be caused by a decreased in inflorescence abortion rate.

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