The money-making weevil

Agriculture

RESEARCH on insect pollination of oil palm in Papua New Guinea has earned the country an ex tra K 89.5 million (U 5585.41 million) at the expense of direct costs totalling just K 315,000, a research paper issued by the Agriculture and Livestock Department has revealed. That makes a return on investment much greater than previously published research cases. The report said the main beneficiaries have been the shareholders (including the national gov ernment) in the companies owning plantations and oil mills, while smallhol ders had a net increase in their revenue of about K 12.5 million.

The research paper was compiled by

George Anthony, an agricultural eco

nomist with the University of New Eng land at Armidale, Australia, and two Papua New Guinea Agriculture and Livestock Department officials, Gae Kauzi and Robert Prior . . .

Most of Papua New Guinea’s palm oil is produced in two provinces: West New Britain and Oro.

The research paper said agronomic conditions have proven favourable, and

Papua New Guinea growers obtain aver age yields well above the world average.

Production has expanded rapidly, from 34,000 tonnes of oil in 1972 to export tonnages in 1986 of 128,900 tonnes of oil and 14,400 tonnes of kernel. The crop contributed about 3.6 per cent of Papua New Guinea’s total export in come, with 5300 household dependents on smallholder output. To put this in perspective, though, the country pro vides only 2.4 per cent of palm oil ex ports.

Ten years ago the industry put up the financial backing for the Papua New Guinea Oil Palm Research Association, with headquarters at Dari. The associa tion is supported by a levy on producers’ fruit production and direct government contributions.

“Of all oil palm research undertaken in Papua New Guinea, it was probably the work on the introduction of pollinat ing insects that has had the biggest im pact on the industry,” the research paper said. Before the introduction of the pol linating weevil, production in the coun try’s oil palm plantings depended on the

hand pollination of each individual palm covering an area of about 40,000 ha.

Teams of men collected fresh pollen and mixed it with talcum powder, which was then blown on to the female flowers of each palm a task which becomes more difficult the taller the palm becomes.

But research work in the African na tion of Cameroon where the oil palm is a native, unlike in Papua New Guinea or Malaysia found that the weevil, Elaeidobius kamerunicus was the most efficient pollinator. After extensive test ing, the first weevils were released in both West New Britain and Oro in mid 1981.

The research paper is based on data collected between 1982 and 1986.

It said that, if the weevil had not been introduced, hand-assisted pollination would have meant lower yields and high er production; it has been calculated that without the insects, yields in West New Britain would have been down by up to 40 per cent. The better fruit set also meant increased extraction rates at the oil mills as the fruit-to-frame ratio rose.

Apart from increased income and pro duction, smallholders have been freed from the labour-intensive pollination and can use the time for other work. □