Oil palm : History and importance Taxonomy, center of diversity, center of origin, history of economic expansion.- Wild and advanced resources Genetic resources, breeding populations for E. guineensis and E. oleifera.- Cytogenetics Classical and molecular cytogenetics.- Classical Genetics and Conventional Plant Breeding Oil palm breeding techniques, oil palm breeding scheme (Modified RRS, backcrossing). Challenges faced in conventional oil palm breeding programs.- Oil Palm tissue culture- fast tracking elite commercial lines Improving cloning efficiency Overcoming abnormality issues observed in clonally propagated palms.- Oil palm transgenic research Challenges, update and future outlook.- Towards oil palm genome sequencing, assembly and annotation Highlights on the limitations of conventional breeding, tissue culture and transgenic research and requirement of genome sequences Challenges, approaches and strategies applied.- Molecular evolution Genetic diversity based on sequencing and analysis with molecular markers (SSRs and SNPs) Looking at evolution via chloroplast and mitochondrial genome analysis.- Identifying genes influencing monogenically inherited traits (shell& fruit colour genes).- Dissecting complex traits via conventional QTL analysis and Association mapping QTLs detected : FAC, height, yield, bunch components.
