The oil palm is an important perennial oil crop for a number of countries in the tropics. A recent finding reported the presence of Coconut cadang-cadang viroid (CCCVd) variant in oil palm. The viroid as reported by Vadamalai (2005) implicated the movement of oil palm planting materials in Malaysia although there was no evidence of the viroid causing devastating disease loss compared to the loss recorded in the Philippines. In reality, the infected oil palm is only found isolated within a planting block (Sundram et al., 2017). The viroid sequence in oil palm was also found with a few base changes when compared to the viroid sequence in coconut of the Philippines. The viroid present in the form of free RNA strands replicating with protein of the host, was difficult to be detected and the available techniques were unable to give reliable and consistent detection.

Main Researcher: Dr. Shamala Sundram
Email: shamala@mpob.gov.my