Open AccessPotassium nutrition in oil palm: The potential of metabolomics as a tool for precision agriculture
Author(s) -
Cui Jing,
Chao de la Barca Juan Manuel,
Lamade Emmanuelle,
Tcherkez Guillaume
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
plants, people, planet
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2572-2611
DOI - 10.1002/ppp3.10169
Subject(s) - palm oil , agriculture , palm , environmental science , agricultural engineering , crop , microbiology and biotechnology , tropical agriculture , metabolomics , agroforestry , agronomy , biology , engineering , ecology , bioinformatics , physics , quantum mechanics
Oil palm is the first oil‐producing crop globally, representing nearly 20 million ha. In the recent past, oil palm cultivation has been controversial not only because of land utilization at the expense of primary tropical forests or health concerns associated with palm oil, but also pollution caused by fertilization (including CO 2 produced to synthesize fertilizers). Oil palm fields are heavily fertilized with potassium (K), and thus finding better, more parsimonious methods to monitor K nutrition is more important than ever. Here we suggest that metabolomics and subsequent machine learning of metabolic signatures represent a promising tool to probe K requirements, opening avenues for precision agriculture in oil palm industry.