This thread is a step by step process needed to setup a oil palm nursery for

1, setting up your own palm plantation

2. for financial gain by selling to others for a fee.

I am I no way a professional neither am I advertising myself, I just feel creating this thread can help someone save cost or help our youths become active in thinking on financial upliftment rather than waiting for gov peanuts.

We look at the life cycle of oil palm in pix one to get started.
seed - sprout - shoot - baby palm - palm tree.

first thing you will need is a good, cool location to setup your nursery. You can use the under of a tree for this to help shade the plant and keep them cool.

Next thing is the soil. You need humus soil, which is just a very black soil composed of dead living matter like tree leaves, worms and animal remains. best place to et humus soil is under a tree, a fallow land covered with grass.

we need nylon to help hold the soil for out seed to grow, you have some easy options
1. pure water nylon (not very good cause after some months it may begin to decompose due to exposure to weather elements, it will try and become problematic during movement. But it can still be used because it is affordable and doesn't weigh much)

2. buying readily made nursery bags, they are the best but not affordable and not easy to come by. Most sellers demand you buy like 1000 pieces and you may not need up to that for a start

3. You can buy those 50naira polythene bags, cut into four, find candle and use it to gum the opened sides leaving one open spot. punch small holes for ventilation and drainage of excess water and you are good to go

After location and bagging of soil, next is the seedling of the oil palm. You can buy already sprouting seedlings from Okomu, Nifor, i heard Okomu 50 seedlings bagged is aound 20k though that was in march 2024 dont know about the price currently.
already nursed seedling of oil palm cost from 500naira to 2400 per stand depending on the variety from local to Tenera and then supergene (Malaysian).

What i did was to go to my farm, got empty oil palm fruit that was left on the ground sprouting already, picked the young ones and transplanted them into the soil.

You then water early morning or evenings, hand weed the pot and wait for 3 months before you apply fertilizer. I used MOP to enhance the root of the oil palm and then bought supergro liquid fertilizer foliage and soil spraying to help the young seedlings

pix 1 is germinated seedlings with true leaves
pix 2 MOP i got for fertilizer application
pix 3 is supergro liquid fertilizer for application every 3 to 4 months, serves as herbicide and fertilizer
pix 4 is sprouted seedlings most seed based companies sell to intending nursery setup

When you are planting oil palm, ensure the sprouted seedling or germinated seedling has the nut attached, especially those using already germinated seedling from bunch found on the farm. If you plant only the leave with root, the tree if it survives will not produce and fruit, it will only continue to grow tall.

Now you have two major challenges your nursery may face in the infant stage.

1. Birds who pluck the young leaves for nest making, you can mitigate against this by using net, i used mosquito net to cover the nursery because my nursery was constantly harassed by small yellow birds who continuously pluck the leaves for their nest.

2. field mouse/bush rat, i work in a plantation so interaction with bush animals is always frequent. The bush rat would dig out the germinated nut and pull it from the stem, a single bush rat can destroy 25 stands in one night, i escaped this buy using net then my workers dug out the hole and killed the rat. Though after 4 to 5 months, the rat issue will stop so one will just need to focus more on the birds.

pix 2 to 4 is what my nursery looks like from beginning to current state.

More pix of my nursery. Pix 4 is what i hope to achieve in future.

Thank you for viewing, you can ask questions and i will try my best to answer.

nurey:


What i did was to go to my farm, got empty oil palm fruit that was left on the ground sprouting already, picked the young ones and transplanted them into the soil.

Wrong move.

Buy certified seeds.

The yield and performance of the crop you will get from this your method might make you regret for decades.

Those who buy Nifor seedlings are not stupid.

Earthstorms:


Wrong move.

Buy certified seeds.

The yield and performance of the crop you will get from this your method might make you regret for decades.

Those who buy Nifor seedlings are not stupid.

The parent stock is initially from nifor

nurey:


The parent stock is initially from nifor

Still wrong move to plant the offspring of the parent stock.

At best you will get 50% tenera, 25% dura and 25% pisifera. This ratio is even if the parent plant was pollinated by another tenera. If it is pollinated by a dura palm, then the tenera ratio will drop lower.

And there is no way of knowing which is which until they are mature. So you will just waste years raising palms that will not give you the yield that you are expecting.

Don't be penny wise, go for Nifor or other certified seeds and be sure of what you are planting.

Note that I do not work for any seed company. Just a friendly advice.

Earthstorms:


Still wrong move to plant the offspring of the parent stock.

At best you will get 50% tenera, 25% dura and 25% pisifera. This ratio is even if the parent plant was pollinated by another tenera. If it is pollinated by a dura palm, then the tenera ratio will drop lower.

And there is no way of knowing which is which until they are mature. So you will just waste years raising palms that will not give you the yield that you are expecting.

Don't be penny wise, go for Nifor or other certified seeds and be sure of what you are planting.

Note that I do not work for any seed company. Just a friendly advice.

This your reply is a little bit flawed in the sense that
1. Supergene produces offspring related to it, so eventually the seed produced from the supergene is still going to be a supergene.

2. Dura, pisifera are local oil palm with their own traits and if you have been following oil palm for years, Tenera is majorly 80% of oil palm plantation available in Nigeria to locals, the local varieties have almost gone extinct. Dura species are dwarf oil palm while pisifera are tall oil palms.

3. Supergene is a specially bred Tenera that can produce even without fertilizer application and also drought resistance, because water availability affects the oil palm ability to produce female flowers.

4. As for your pollination explanation, oil palm is an hermaprodite and the major pollinating agent is the weevil found around the palm.

5. If as you say the parent stock will be affected, I think the only trait if pollination was done by insects apart from the weevil would be trait of tall and short but not the high yielding characteristics of the supergene.

I am willing to learn more from you also and would await a reply from you on my submission