Malaysia did not take oil palm seeds from Nigeria – NIFOR

The Nigerian Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) on Friday debunked the widely-held view that  Malaysia obtained its first palm fruits/seedlings from Nigeria.

The Director of Production at the institute, Christy Okwuagwu, said that Malaysia was already advanced in palm oil production before the establishment of NIFOR.

She spoke while  conducting media fellows round the institute’s research projects in Benin on Friday.

The fellows were sponsored by the ‘Biosciences for Farming in Africa’, an international non-profit organisation and the facility visit was aimed at assessing the level of research on oil palm at the institute.

Ms. Okwuagwu said on the sidelines of the visit that Malaysia couldn’t have taken seedlings from Nigeria through NIFOR because the country was advanced in oil palm production before the establishment of NIFOR.

“It is a story that is always carried around that Malaysia came to NIFOR to get seeds and now Malaysia has overtaken Nigeria. There is no way to assume that Malaysians came to Nigeria and got planting material and now they have overtaken us, they never did. People say it carelessly and they believe it. This is one of the very basic information I want to debunk in every situation because we know truly that it was through the Dutch expedition that the Malaysians had this planting material in the 19th century. NIFOR actually existed because of the threat that Malaysia posed to a continuous exploitation of wild grooves,” she said.

Ms. Okwuagwu, who is the oldest scientist in the institute, also backed up her claim with historical references.

She showed evidence through the documentations of a book titled “The Oil Palm,” authored by R.H.V. Corley and P.B. Tinker.

“The earliest record of introduction of palms into South East Asia was first seedlings planted in Bogo Botanical Garden in 1848 in Jaba in the Dutch East Indies. Two of these were from Amsterdam Botanical Garden but it is not known how they originated, the other two from Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. The palms that sprang from these four seedlings were all quite similar and it has been supposed that they were all originally produced from Amsterdam, through some African unknown origin. These four seedlings formed the entire source of the planting material in Malaysia. That is why we say that the entire population of the planting material in Malaysia are very narrow genetic base; we don’t normally depend entirely on them for breeding and development. Actually, it is necessary that they depend on us and subsequent materials to improve their planting material.