Coconut varieties from farmer's fields in Vietnam

A very rare coconut with flat spikelet own by a farmer of Ben tre in Mekong Delta,
photographed in 1998 by R. Bourdeix
and....
... The same farmer (and coconut) photographed in 2016,
18 years later by R. Bourdeix - Nice to meet you again!
Back from the seed garden, we saw a farmer's plantation planted with a variety of Green Aromatic said to be imported from Thailand. This variety is not a dwarf type. On the stems, the distance between 11 leaf scars is about 45 to 50 cm, and the growth is comparable to those of King coconut variety in Sri Lanka. So all aromatic varieties are not Dwarf-types. Aromatic tender nuts are sold by farmer at farm border 2 pieces for 1 USD, when simple tender nuts from non-aromatic Green Dwarf or Tall are sold 4 pieces for 1 USD.

Aromatic Green, but not Dwarf type....


In the Ben Tré region, close to the site of the ancient "Coconut religion", we found a coconut variety which seems to be a Tall-type; it has special inflorescences characterized by very short spikelets in the distal part. The inflorescence has some similarities with those of the Tacunan Green Dwarf, a variety from the Philippines.

1. Inflorescence of the new Tall-type found in Ben Tré
2. Tacunan Green Dwarf from the Philippines
3. "Normal" shaped inflorescence of a Brazilian Green Dwarf 
New Tall-type found in Ben Tré



Yellow Makapuno Dwarf with thick meat photographed
by IOOP researcher in a farmer's field
Fruit of the progeny obtained from the Makapuno Yellow Dwarf
by embryoculture and planted in Trang Bang 


The IOOP in Vitro Culture Laboratory for producing Makapuno seedlings

On January 17th  2016, we visited the IOOP laboratory for production of Macapuno seedlings by in vitro culture.

In vitro culture is conducted in commercial glass bottles (Coca Cola or Pepsi) that are broken at the end of the process. This technique "made in Vietnam" is very cheap, as 25 bottles are bought for 1 USD. Ms Ngo indicates that the small size of the opening of the bottle is efficient to reduce contaminations when compared to other more expensive glass containers with wider opening.

Each Makapuno coconut is bought at 5 USD; two Makapuno nuts give one viable seedling from embryo culture (50% global survival rate). A Macapuno seedling from vitro culture is sold 35 USD to farmers. About 2000 seedlings are sold annually. The lab could produce more but the market is not enough, at least partially  because of the high price of the seedlings.




Makapuno in Vietnam - Dua Sap
See Publication in Cocoinfo international volume 20, 2, 2013.

As indicated long time ago by G.Santos from PCA, the pandan smell of Aromatic can also be detected at the nursery stage in the new young leaves and the roots. On adult palms, it is also possible to detect it on the young leaves, young roots (and, of course, the water of the fruit).






Coconut in situ conservation in Vietnam: a potential for developing new R&D projects

In Vietnam, about five thousand coconut palms have been identified by IOOP, around 1000 in each of 5 provinces: Ben Tre, Tien Giang; Tra Vinh, Binh Dinh and Phu Yen. About 40 to 50 farmers were selected by province. All palms have been geo referenced.
Satellite images illustrating the location of 3000 palms geo referenced in farmer's fields
from the whole country to the farms levels
Presently the data collected in farms is mainly the identity and localisation of the farmers, the variety and the individual level of production of the palms. For developing an in situ conservation approach, it could be very interesting to collect more data about these farmers. A first approach could be to use the International descriptors list conceived under the leadership of Bioversity International. A second approach could be to collect more data on the social habits of farmers and their traditional practices and knowledge, such as for example those developed in the framework of the REPROCROP project.

See the technical movie made from the training: how to transfer the field data to Google Earth Pro by using Qgis software.


As pointed out in a recent publication (1), many current coconut research and development programmes are impacting conservation beyond genebanks and farmer’s knowledge on the reproductive biology of their crops. Most of these programmes do not mention it explicitly. Although not yet mentioned, the R&D actions undertaken by IOOP has an implicit but obvious positive effect on the sustainability of coconut in situ conservation in Vietnam. So why not to mention it and to develop it accordingly? Thus, including the conservation of genetic resources as one of the explicit objectives of such programmes will increase the commitment of both the scientific community and decision makers, and will result in a win-win situation.


Seednuts are sold from farmers to farmers, and sometimes bought by the institute or by the governments of the provinces and then redistributed to other farmers. It was not yet estimated how many seednuts were sold from farmers to farmers and to local Governments.

(1) Bourdeix R., Perera L., Rivera R.L., Saena-Tuia V and Masumbuko L. 2016. Global coconut communities - status and strategies in in situ diversity management and utilization. In: Coconut: Global status and perspectives. Central Plantation Crop Research Institute, Kasaragod, India. Submitted.


How to turn a coconut farmer's field into a polyvalent seed garden producing Hybrid, Tall and Dwarf varieties

The third recommendation endorsed during the 2012 COGENT Steering Committee Meeting was to encourage local stakeholders (men and women farmers, private enterprise, NGOs and CBOs) to become more involved in supplying quality planting material, and to teach farmers and other stakeholders how to autonomously produce quality seedlings of hybrids and other varieties, using the Polymotu concept or any other adopted method (Bourdeix and Allou, 2012a).

Here is a simple method to turn part of a farmer's field into a seed garden designed for producing both Hybrid, Tall and Dwarf seedlings. This method is to be published soon in a CPCRI book (Bourdeix R.,  Perera L., Rivera R.L., Saena-Tuia V and Masumbuko L. 2016. Global coconut communities - status and strategies in in situ diversity management and utilization. In: Coconut – global status and perspectives. Central Plantation Crop Research Institute, Kasaragod, India. Submitted.)


Figure 1. Example of a part of a farmer's field to be turn into a Polyvalent Seed Garden
The following steps are proposed:

1) At the beginning, the field is planted with Brown, Green-Brown and Green palms from a traditional Tall variety.

2) Cut all brown and green-brown colored palms and keep only the green-colored ones.

3) Plant Malayan Red Dwarf and Green Tall varieties to replace the removed Talls. Start to collect data of the remaining old green Talls, for about two years.


4) Two years later, when the first dwarfs will be close to flowering, and according to the result of this characterization, remove at least half of the green-colored Talls and keep only the best. This will improve the value of both Tall and hybrid seednuts.




5) Plant again Red Dwarfs and/or selected Green Talls on the available space.




Steps 1 and 2 can be conducted either successively or either in a more progressive way: for economic reasons, it could be envisioned to plant first the Dwarfs under the existing Talls, and to remove the brown and green-brown Talls only one or two year later, when the Dwarf will be close to flowering.
This design was presented by using as parent the Malayan Red Dwarf which is a strongly autogamous variety. For producing hybrids seednuts, this dwarf variety needs to be emasculated. Other Red Dwarf varieties could also be used instead of the Malayan. Some varieties especially interesting are the Allogamous Compact Red Dwarf recently discovered in French Polynesia and Fiji. By using such allogamous Dwarf, it could be expected to produce up to 50% hybrid seednuts without making any emasculation; such an economy of labour and manpower could allow to strongly reduce the cost of hybrid coconut seednuts.




Remote sensing techniques applied to the coconut palm - an overview

Most of the information was obtained from Dr Gaëlle Viennois, from Join Research Unit AMAP, Cirad.

Some Qgis Toolbox allows to conduct remote sensing analysis, but they are not often used in CIRAD. At Cirad, researchers are mainly using commercial (and quite expensive) dedicated software, that works well on recent laptops with sufficient RAM (8 gigabytes), and quite large harddisk: each satellite image generally need 2-3 gigabytes. The software are:

ENVI Excellis - About 4000 USD once (windows 32 ou 64) mobile computer. one image 2-3 gigas.
E-cognition (trimble) - Payant classification d'objet

Multispectral images are needed to identify and count coconut palms. To get the satellite images:

Spot isis: one image costs about 100 USD: medium quality, multispectral image with resolution 6m ; panchromatic image with resolution 2m.

E-geos image: good quality, multispectral image with resolution 2m ; panchromatic 50 cm. Need to buy a minimum of 100 km2; when the image is already available, it cost 20-25 USD per km2; when the image needs to be acquired, the price is approximative doubled.

Dedicated Training is organized at "Maison de la Téledétection" Montpellier France.

Documents to download:

Komba Mayossa, P. C., Coppens d’Eeckenbrugge, G., Borne, F., Gadal, S., & Viennois, G. Developing a method to map coconut agrosystems from high-resolution satellite images.

Teina, R. (2009). Caractérisation de la cocoteraie des Tuamotu à partir d'images satellites à très haute résolution spatiale (Doctoral dissertation, Université Pierre et Marie Curie-Paris VI).


Teina, R., Béréziat, D., Stoll, B., & Chabrier, S. (2008, July). Toward a global Tuamotu archipelago coconut trees sensing using high resolution optical data. In Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium, 2008. IGARSS 2008. IEEE International (Vol. 2, pp. II-797). IEEE.













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