Mega Jutamas bags MPOB nursery accolade

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RECOGNITION: The presentation of awards by MPOB to Mega Jutamas at their nursery and plantation in May this year.

MIRI: Miri-based oil palm plantation Mega Jutamas’ quest to produce the best oil palm seedlings through good agricultural practices has been rewarded with the highest recognition by Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), thus setting the benchmark for the industry in the state.

Mega Jutamas Sdn Bhd has the distinction of being the first in the state to win the Oil Palm Nursery Competency Certificate.

The plantation company is also the first from Sarawak to be awarded MPOB’s highest standard for nursery under Code of Good Nursery Practice for Oil Palm Nurseries, which it received on May 17 this year. It also won Code of Good Agricultural Practice for Oil Palm Estates and Smallholdings for stringent audits from MPOB for 2012-2015.

Prior to that, the company was awarded the Oil Palm Nursery Certificate of Competency in April last year for meeting MPOB’s stringent requirements of high standards in infrastructure, facilities and nursery practices.

THE TEAM: The Happening Team of Mega Jutamas nursery and plantation which has received accolades from MPOB.

VITAL TIPS: Pui talks on the importance of good practices at the nursery.

FOR TRANSPLANTING: An ingenious way of removing soil from large polybags.

WATER SOURCE OF LIFE: Watering twice a day is essential for optimal growth.

TRANSPLANTING: Seedlings are transplanted to the main nursery after first culling.

THE GOLDEN CROP: A fruit that produces high yield palm oil.

KEEPING THEM HEALTHY: A worker manually weeds the grass where the germinated seedlings are consigned as identified families and labelled accordingly by the seed producer.

Situated along Sungai Kabulu, Suai in the Sawai Land District, about 132 km from Miri, the nursery is headed by general manager Chi Sung Yi, divisional manager Song Tiing Sing, assistant managers Lee Chew Fah and Anselm Dangga.

Mega Jutamas believes in providing the best seedlings as the nursery is the foundation for every successful oil palm plantation. The seedlings it produces are capable of sustaining large oil yields for 25 years or more.

All modern, commercial planting materials consisting of tenera palms or DxP hybrids are obtained by crossing thick shelled dura with shell-less pisifera, whereby the resulting tree will produce thin-shelled tenera fruit. Only certified pre-germinated oil palm seeds from established seed gardens are used.

This award winning nursery supplies DxP Yangambi (Felda) and Auro (Sime Darby) seedlings to their clients, including MPOB and smallholders. It has a holding capacity of 350,000 seedlings over 20 hectares.

According to executive director Pui Yuh Tzer, Mega Jutamas believes in providing the best seedlings for its clients to ensure they enjoy bountiful harvest and investment returns.

“It is crucial to pick only the seedlings that are healthy and productive, and our

GOOD AGRICULTURAL PRACTICE: The Pre-Nursery stage where polybags or trays must be filled with soil up to the rim and placed in the nursery beds at least four weeks before the planting date to allow settling, topping up with soil and pre-planting irrigation.

nursery makes the effort to cull potentially unproductive or unhealthy ones at the pre-nursery and nursery stages at the upstream level to provide quality planting material for the upstream level,” he said.

The most common disorders requiring seedling culling are fronds set at narrow angles to the main stem, flat top appearance, undivided pinnate, pinnate that are narrow and rolled, and pinnate with respectively narrow and wide internodes.

The management believes that this is important as the nursery is the foundation for every successful oil palm plantation. It must produce healthy seedlings having the potential for sustaining large oil yields for 25 years or more.

MPOB is currently the biggest client of Mega Jutamas nursery which has supplied about 150,000 seedlings since it started as an in-house nursery for its own plantation in 2006.

Mega Jutamas currently supplies seedlings to clients in Limbang, Ulu Baram and northern Sarawak, with smallholders being the bulk of its customer base.