Simple Regression Modeling on the Number of Fronds Increases with Age on Oil Palm Seedling’s Growth

Sumaryanto1,2, Mirwan Ushada1, Endy Suwondo1*
1Department Agro-Industrial Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Gadjah Mada University. Jl. Flora No.1 Bulaksumur, Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia
2Indonesian Oil Palm Research Institute, Jln. Brigjen Katamso, No. 51 Medan 20158, Indonesia
* Corresponding Author

DOI: https://doi.org/10.51584/IJRIAS.2023.8620

Received: 01 June 2023; Revised: 16 June 2023; Accepted: 22 June 2023; Published: 15 July 2023

Abstract: – The productivity of oil palm crops is a crucial factor in the current oil palm plantation industry, considering the prevalent issues and criticisms about the environmental impact of land clearing for oil palm plantations. Given that the productivity of oil palm crops is determined by their quality and growth rate, it is important to study the speed and quality of oil palm crop growth during the early stages, namely seedling growth, where the number of fronds can be measured. This research aims to analyse the number of seedling fronds growing during their 9-month growth period since being transferred from the pre-nursery to the main nursery plantation. The fronds growth observation results of 300 seedlings over nine months are evaluated using the distribution analysis each month, and the growth model in the form of a linear equation is developed using a statistical linear regression method. The correlation coefficients indicate a reasonably significant increase in the number of fronds as the age of the seedlings, with R values = 0.6728, R = 0.8346, and R = 0.9489 for the minimum, the maximum and average number of fronds, respectively. It is concluded that the growth of the number of oil palm fronds can be easily simulated using the developed regression model.

Keywords: – frond number growth, oil palm, modelling, productivity, simple linear regression

I. Introduction

Indonesia is one of the most important countries that produce oil palm-based products and has a large oil palm plantation area. The main characteristic of the oil palm plantation in Indonesia is that nearly 50% of the oil palm plantations are owned by the people as a household cultivation business (Herdiansyah et al., 2020). However, considering that oil palm plantations are always associated with deforestation problems (Murphy et al., 2021), the 2004 Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) agreed to oblige producers to no longer carry out deforestation and recommend implementing the concept of the oil palm industry (Pareira, 2021). Consequently, the increase of productivity on oil palm plantations must be improved. Regarding this fact, promoting oil palm cultivation methods for farmers is essential. Thus, studying the development of oil palm growth is quite important to support the development of oil palm smallholders.

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