InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA – Indonesia's Palm Oil Plantation Fund Management Agency (BPDP) has called for stronger collaboration between researchers, industry players, and policymakers to ensure palm oil research produces innovations that can be directly adopted by farmers and commercialized by industry.
Opening the Indonesia Palm Oil Research Week (PERISAI) 2026, BPDP President Director Eddy Abdurrachman emphasized that research should go beyond academic publications and generate technologies capable of improving productivity, sustainability, and competitiveness across the country's palm oil sector.
Speaking at the event attended by InfoSAWIT on Monday (July 20), Eddy described PERISAI as BPDP's annual platform for bringing together researchers, academics, government institutions, students, industry representatives, and other stakeholders to showcase scientific achievements while accelerating the commercialization of innovation.
Held under the theme of transforming plantation systems through innovation and technology, PERISAI 2026 comes as the administration of President Prabowo Subianto prioritizes energy security, food resilience, industrial downstream development, and human capital enhancement as key national development goals.
According to Eddy, Indonesia's palm oil industry plays a strategic role in supporting those priorities. Besides being one of the country's largest foreign exchange earners, the sector provides livelihoods for more than 16 million people throughout its value chain.
He also highlighted the importance of smallholders, who manage around 41 percent of Indonesia's total oil palm plantation area, making their productivity and welfare central to the industry's long-term sustainability.
"Indonesia is fortunate to be the world's largest producer of palm oil. However, that position must be supported by excellence in innovation, technology, and human resources to address climate change, sustainability demands, and the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence," Eddy said.
He noted that significant opportunities remain to increase smallholder productivity through the use of certified superior planting materials, mechanization, digital farming, efficient fertilization, environmentally friendly pest management, and climate adaptation practices.
Such improvements, he said, would enable Indonesia to boost production without expanding plantation acreage, thereby balancing productivity gains with environmental sustainability and higher farmer incomes.
Eddy also stressed that downstream development should not be limited to biodiesel production. Indonesia's palm oil industry, he said, has enormous potential to expand into higher value-added products, including oleochemicals, food ingredients, bioplastics, surfactants, biodegradable lubricants, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), and biotechnology products.
"Every innovation creates new products, new industries, new jobs, and stronger economic growth. That is why research and downstream development must always go hand in hand," he said.
He argued that the true measure of research success lies not in the number of scientific papers published, but in the extent to which research findings are adopted by farmers, utilized by industry, developed into marketable technologies, and ultimately generate tangible economic and social benefits.
To support that objective, BPDP will continue financing applied research capable of addressing industry needs while strengthening Indonesia's competitiveness in the global palm oil market.
Beyond providing funding, Eddy said BPDP aims to serve as a catalyst for collaboration by connecting government agencies, universities, research institutions, businesses, smallholders, investors, and international partners within a unified innovation ecosystem.
"We hope PERISAI will become a platform for collaboration, technology incubation, and faster commercialization of Indonesia's palm oil innovations. Indonesia must not only remain the world's largest palm oil producer, but also emerge as a global center for palm oil innovation and technology," he concluded. (T2)
