In recent years, Southern Thailand has witnessed an increase in surface planted with oil palm, driven primarily by smallholders who contribute over 90% of Thailand’s oil palm output. Despite their significant contribution, oil palm smallholders have consistently achieved lower yields compared to agro-industries, and limited research has been conducted to understand the limiting factors, such as management practices. Structured interviews were conducted to gather information about management practices and estimate the fresh fruit bunch yield in a network of 18 plantations in Krabi province, Thailand. A clustering approach, combining principal component analysis and hierarchical cluster analysis, was used to characterise the diversity of smallholder management practices. Four clusters of management practices were highlighted, characterised by varying intensities of fertiliser application (nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium), mechanical versus chemical weeding, and harvest intervals. Notably, the farmers in our study applied less fertiliser, on average, than the recommendations of Thai Good Agricultural Practices. A significant portion of plots in the area (12 out of 18 plots) achieved good yields compared to attainable yields. A clear relationship between management practices and yield could however not be established. The large diversity of oil palm smallholders’ management practices and their performances highlighted in this study need to be better taken into account and understood in order to improve sustainability and foster certification schemes such as Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO).

In Uruguay, onion (Allium cepa L.) germplasm is mainly derived from the genetic material introduced by several waves of European immigrants and subsequently multiplied by household farmers, resulting in a wealth of locally adapted populations. This study examined the genetic diversity in a collection of 27 local onion populations and two cultivars derived from them. A total of 843 onion plants were fingerprinted, and 83 inter-simple sequence repeat polymorphic bands were generated. Analysis of molecular variance showed high diversity within the populations (66% of the total variation). Some short-day populations from different geographical origins were grouped together by the unweighted pair-group method using arithmetic averages, principal coordinate analysis and cluster analysis, while the more extensively sampled long- and intermediate-day populations showed a widespread distribution, with no significant subgrouping among them. This weakly structured gene pool is probably the consequence of seed and bulb exchange between farmers and natural inter-pollination. Nevertheless, a Bayesian analysis allowed the distinction of four genetic backgrounds of alleles in the whole collection, and populations were predominately assigned to each genetic background. In addition, mitochondrial variants determining normal (N) pollen fertility or the sterile S or T types were analysed for the same set of plants using specific primers. Most accessions showed a proportion of male-sterile individuals. Cytoplasm type T was the most represented (26 out of 29 accessions), and cytoplasm type S was found in a low proportion of individuals in seven populations. Uruguayan onion germplasm maintains a low degree of genetic differentiation despite the small cultivated area and intense seed exchange, probably due in part to different market purposes based on the growing cycle.