No abstract

The varying condition of climate, soil properties, crop stage, ground water existing in oil palm cultivation require the specific water balance model to perform the precision crop water use. The purposes for this research were to develop oil palm water balance model for calculating the hydrological parameter of oil palm and analysing oil palm water footprint and root water uptake distribution in root zone. The model of oil palm water balance was developed through the following step: oil palm root architecture study, instrument installation and data observation, model development and calibration. The oil palm water balance tool was developed by inputting the data base including climate, soil properties, crop stage, root density and root zone layer as well. The results in the case for 11th year oil palm tree on soil type ultisol in Central Kalimantan during the simulation climate data pointed out that the average root water is 3.46 mm/day and distributed 63% on 2st root zone. From the total water usage and the average production 14.19kg/month, it resulted the 1.053 m3/kg water footprint of FFB (76 % green water and 24% blue water).

Indonesia’s crude palm oil (CPO) production from year to year continues to increase, at the end of 2020 it reached 17.35 million tons, up 3.6% from the previous year. Increasing production will result in more CPO stock and require good storage. The storage process that occurs is to maintain the temperature of the CPO so that the quality is not damaged. This temperature regulation is still done manually and raises the risk of work accidents. The purpose of this research is to create a temperature control system and automatic volume measurement that can be monitored from a smartphone. The manufacture of a control system used ESP8266 NodeMCu microcontroller, temperature sensor, proximity sensor, and 1000-Watt heater. Programming used the Arduino IDE and C++. The result of this study was an IoT CPO Storage Tank design equipped with sensors and microcontrollers. The temperature was measured with the DS18B20 sensor had a data accuracy of 99.19% while the volume measured with the HC-SR04 sensor had an accuracy of 99.78%. Data obtained from the sensor could be seen through the Thingspeak application from a computer or smartphone.

Massive issues on significant water used by oil palm trees suggest further estimation of water exploited by oil palm trees. This research employed sap flow technique using thermal dissipation probes (TDP), compared to Penman-Monteith equation as the benchmark. Water utilization by plants was studied through evapotranspiration, to investigate their water footprint and water productivity. Field study was carried out in a 17 year old oil palm plantation in Siak, Riau, Indonesia. Sap flow measurement was carried out on the 17th frond over sapric peat soil during 7th January - 18th March 2019. Water used from 19th oil palm was 40.97±6.63 L day−1 equals to 0.51±0.083 mm day−1 (mean ±SD). While, estimation based on Penman-Monteith equation was 286.3 ± 64.078 L day−1 equals to 3.58±0.80 mm day−1 (mean ±SD). Total accumulated water from Penman-Monteith equation (286.3 L day−1) was considerably higher than the one from sap flow measurement (41 L day−1). The result showed that water footprint from 17 year old oil palm tree based on sap flow and Penman-Monteith equation was 0.204 and 1.43 m3 kg−1 fresh fruit bunches respectively. While water productivity estimated from sap flow was 0.70 kg m−3 while Penman-Monteith equation achieved 4.89 kg m−3.

There are significant studies that have quantified oil palm water footprint as an indicator of environmental sustainability but an estimation of water footprint under varying soil types furthermore is still limited. The objectives of the study were to estimate whether annual variations of soil type and yields significantly effects for the oil palm water footprint. The data from three types of soil (spodosol, inceptisol, ultisol) were collected from an oil palm plantation in Pundu village, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. To perform the water footprint analysis we utilize water balance accounting equations via application Cropwat 8.0. From that, we determine the crop irrigation scheduling to compute the blue, green, and grey water footprint of oil palm fresh fruit bunch in the area. Our analysis found that the actual evapotranspiration of spodosol and inceptisol have the same value: 1242 mm/year whilst ultisol is 1239 mm/year. The total water footprint of oil palm varied considerably with the largest value being 1310.04 m3/ton for ultisol. The actual evapotranspiration of spodosol and inceptisol have the same value of 1242 mm/year whilst ultisol is 1239 mm/year. The higher production resulted in a lower water footprint and vice versa. Moreover, the total water footprint from ultisol soil type has the highest value due to the lowest yields. The difference in evapotranspiration value resulted in the insignificant value of total water footprint. The lower water availability, the lower water use, and the higher actual irrigation requirement in oil palm plantation yet showed the unnotable impact on water footprint in different soil types for the oil palm plantation.