Replanting is the point in an oil palm cycle where costs are highest and income is lowest. The old stand is gone, the new one will not yield for years, and in the meantime every young palm needs feeding. Fertilizer is one of the largest recurring costs in that window, and it is one of the few that can be reduced without reducing the standard of the planting.
MPOB trials put the achievable saving at up to 42%. This article explains where that figure comes from and what has to change to get it.
Why replanting is so fertilizer-hungry
A newly planted palm has a small root system in a large volume of soil. It cannot reach much, and what it can reach is easily lost. Malaysian rainfall moves soluble nutrients down through the profile quickly, and on peat in particular a good share of a conventional application can be gone before the palm has used it.
The conventional answer is repetition. A young palm at replanting is typically given around 2.5 kg of fertilizer a year, split across four to five rounds. Each round is a full pass across the block: labour, transport, supervision, and a window that has to fit the weather. On a large replanting programme, that is the real cost, and it is mostly not the cost of the fertilizer itself.
Where the 42% comes from
The saving is not a discount on a bag. It comes from three changes at once.
Fewer applications. A controlled release fertilizer is coated so that nutrients release gradually over the year rather than all at once. At replanting, that turns four or five rounds into one.
Less product. Because far less is lost, less needs to be applied. MPOB’s recommended rate is 600 g per tree on peat soil and 800 g per tree on mineral soil, applied once into the planting hole, against roughly 2.5 kg a year conventionally.
Less loss. In MPOB’s trials, the controlled release formulation reduced nutrient lost to leaching by 56% compared with conventional fertilizer. Fertilizer that stays in the root zone is fertilizer you do not have to buy twice.
Put together, MPOB’s cost modelling for replanting – based on 148 trees per hectare – came out at up to 42% lower.
Application rates at replanting and after
| Stage | Rate | Method |
|---|---|---|
| Replanting, peat soil | 600 g per tree | Planting hole |
| Replanting, mineral soil | 800 g per tree | Planting hole |
| Second year | 1.0 kg controlled release + 1.5 kg NPK per tree, or 1.5 kg controlled release per tree | Four holes, 2 to 2.5 feet from the base |
| Legume cover crop | 5 kg controlled release + 5 kg rock phosphate + 6 to 9 kg LCC + 20 to 30 g Rhizobium per hectare | Furrow planting |
Source: MPOB, 2026
Two details that matter in practice. At replanting the fertilizer goes into the planting hole, not on the surface – the point is to put it where the young root system will actually be. In the second year it moves to four holes at a distance of two to two and a half feet from the base, following the root spread outward.
What the trials showed in the field
MPOB’s replanting trials ran at five sites, part of an 18-site programme across Selangor, Perak, Terengganu, Johor, Sarawak and Sabah, over three years.
At a Sabah replanting site in the second year after planting, palms on the controlled release treatment recorded a SPAD reading of 68.0 against 49.1 for a competing controlled release product – a substantial difference in leaf nitrogen status. At a Johor site, palms receiving 1.5 kg of the controlled release product recorded a SPAD of 76.2, against 68.3 for palms on 4.5 kg per tree per year of conventional fertilizer. Less product, better result.
What this does not change
Controlled release fertilizer changes how nutrients are delivered. It does not replace the rest of good replanting practice. Soil type still determines the rate – the peat and mineral figures differ for a reason. Legume cover crops still matter. And the second- year programme still needs to happen; a single application at planting is designed to carry the palm through the first year, not indefinitely.
The product
The rates above are MPOB’s recommendations for MPOB F7, a polymer coated controlled release fertilizer formulated 19-8-13-2.5-0.4B +TE, developed by the Malaysian Palm Oil Board with Smart Fert over three years of trials.