https://jopr.mpob.gov.my Fri, 14 Nov 2025 07:30:21 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://jopr.mpob.gov.my/harnessing-the-role-of-epigenetics-in-oil-palm-improvement/ Fri, 14 Nov 2025 07:30:21 +0000 https://jopr.mpob.gov.my/?p=15044 By 2050, the global population will approach 10 billion, placing immense pressure on agriculture to ensure food security amidst stagnant yields, land scarcity and extreme weather events. Enhancing crop improvement for higher productivity per hectare is crucial. Epigenetics, the study of heritable gene expression changes without DNA alteration, presents a promising avenue for crop adaptation and resilience. Plants employ epigenetic modifications to respond to environmental shifts, offering flexibility due to their reversible nature. This review aims to explore the role of epigenetics in oil palm breeding, drawing from insights obtained from other plants with a focus on the heritability and stability of epigenetic modifications, as well as priming strategies to enhance resilience by altering the epigenome. We also highlight key advancements in oil palm epigenetics studies, including the discovery of the Karma transposable element and its use in the SureSawit™ KARMA assay to possibly identify plants prone to mantling. Additionally, we discuss the potential of EWAS for marker discovery, integration of CRISPR/dCas9-based epigenome editing for targeted modifications and priming strategies to enhance oil palm resilience. The importance of field-based validation of epigenetic markers and priming approaches is emphasised. These advancements may help promote sustainable agriculture in a changing world.

]]> https://jopr.mpob.gov.my/omics-platform-technologies-for-discovery-and-understanding-the-systems-biology-of-oil-palm/ Tue, 29 Mar 2022 05:10:47 +0000 https://jopr.mpob.gov.my/V2/?p=9478 Palm oil is the leading vegetable oil in terms of volume in the world market. Indonesia and Malaysia are the top producers and exporters of the commodity. The global production of palm oil reached 73.5 million tonnes in the period 2018/2019, up from approximately 70.5 million tonnes in 2017/2018. Oil palm is the most productive crop in the world being 10 times more productive than soyabean which produces only about 0.45 t oil per hectare. Nonetheless, the industry is continuously under pressure to improve productivity and sustainability. This will require concerted innovations across the entire palm oil supply chain and fully committed research efforts including upstream technologies to expedite crop improvement. At the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), research efforts at development of tools for improving oil palm traits by genetic modification have been augmented more recently with omics-based approaches and all of these innovations are synchronised towards improved product quality. Omics is a multi-disciplinary field encompassing genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. Each of these fields provides an opportunity to understand and view oil palm biology from a global perspective, enabling accelerated discoveries for improved productivity and the development of new and improved varieties. An integrative omics approach promises great value in both phenotyping and diagnostic analyses. With the current technological capabilities, metabolomics is also being exploited for identifying unique chemical fingerprints to detect product contamination and adulteration in oil palm. This effort is actively being conducted in order to position the oil palm industry to meet and optimise the delivery of the highest quality oil with minimum environmental and social concerns. In this review, an overview is given on the current knowledge and progress made in oil palm research, focusing on the application of omics strategies and their integration with high-throughput technologies for oil palm crop improvement, development of geographical traceability system and ensuring that palm oil is free from residual oil contamination.

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