Visit of Dr Roland Bourdeix, coconut specialist, to Hawaii, in June 2020.
Roland Bourdeix
I will be in Hawaii from 2-3 to 15-16 June 2020 to participate the NIU NOW! Coconut festival. I would be interested to have contact to develop coconut activities in addition to my participation to this festival.
I also miss an important information regarding a coconut genebank in Hawaii. I remember that I read that there was a coconut collection in Hawaii, and that unique coconut accessions from Moorea Island (French Polynesia) and from the famous Niuafo'ou Island (Tonga) were conserved in this genebank. But I fail to find back the paper about this genebank. Can anybody help?
Kind regards
Roland
João Pedro de Barros Reicao cordido
Att. João Pedro de Barros Reicao Cordido
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Mike Foale
Hi Roland
I wish you well in taking part in the NIU NOW festival in Hawaii in March.
I did once visit(in 1988) a small coconut plantation on Maui where a retired American couple (not Polynesian) had brought a few seeds from coconuts on other islands of the Pacific, that they had visited as tourists, and planted them together. It was not exactly a gene bank, more like a small hobby collection. I cannot access at the moment the report that I made to ACIAR about that visit. The location was somewhere on the south-east side of Maui island. Locally in Hawaii somebody might be able to assist you.
On another matter, I recently read for the first time you report on visiting Solomon Islands two years ago. An extremely valuable report.
You speculate that on Rennell some of the “poor health” of palms could be due to chlorine deficiency. I think it would not be so, as islands like that receive a significant amount of NaCl in rainfall. I reported at Yandina that more than 100 kg/ha of NaCl was found in the rainfall that we measured and tested for one year, around 1966. Brontispa beetle is active on Rennell and could be responsible for the browning of leaflets due to feeding of the larva before the frond actually emerges.
Best wishes
Mike Foale
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Roland BOURDEIX
To: "coconut" <coc...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, 27 February, 2020 01:32:19
Subject: RE: [Coconut:7696] Visit of Dr Roland Bourdeix, coconut specialist, to Hawaii, in June 2020.
Niral V
Dr V. Niral, BSc (Agri.) PhD
Principal Scientist (Genetics)
ICAR-Central Plantation Crops Research Institute P.O. Kudlu
Kasaragod 671 124 INDIA
Trent "cocoraj" coffin
Mike Foale
Message about the coconut palms of Rennell Island.
Dr Bourdeix has supplied some excellent images from his visit in 2018. There are many examples of palms that are not productive, and some that have severe damage to the fronds, and others where the trunk has become very thin in the recent past due to disease or drought or mineral deficiency. If there are weather records available recent periods of drought could be identified. But damage to the roots due to insect damage would need further research by a specialist.
The geology of Rennell Island is almost unique. The foundation of the island is a coral atoll, and this was raised 200 metres or so due to movement of the earth’s crust. The lake is a remnant of the lagoon that is a feature of all atolls. Some time in recent geological history the island has been “coated” with ash from distant volcanic eruptions (perhaps in the Russell Islands 300 km away) which explains the presence of soil rich in clay minerals and the presence of bauxite which has been mined recently. Where the soil is very shallow any palm would suffer severe stress during a time of drought. Mineral deficiency is unlikely where there is some soil, but where there is very little soil, due to erosion, the palms are growing on a very alkaline surface which could result in low availability of coper, zinc, manganese and possibly other minerals.
There is a ready source of Rennell seeds in the Russell Islands where many thousands of palms were planted in a seed garden along with Malayan Orange Dwarf for the production of hybrid seed in the 1970s. Hybrids were guaranteed by pruning all the male flowers from the dwarf palms so that only Rennell pollen was available and all the seeds on the Dwarf palms were hybrids. Only some of the seeds harvested from the Rennell palms now would be pollinated by Dwarf pollen. It should be possible to select pure Rennell because the growth rate of the seedlings in the nursery is likely to be different between those which are pure Rennell and those which are hybrids.
Mike
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