One of the most promising micronutrients recommended for optimum health has been sent into a tailspin by recent media and scientific reports. We have become rather familiar with eye-catching captions, such as ‘beta-carotene ineffective in forestalling cancer’ and ‘beta-carotenic ineffective in forestalling cancer’ and ‘beta-carotene takes a collective beating’. To those who have been following […]

Gone are the days when we were practically afraid to talk about the nutritional properties of palm oil. The fear then was not so much our reservation about its nutritional attributes but rather the lack of published references available in the world biomedical databases. This was significantly corrected by PORIM’s concerted efforts in propadating well-defined […]

Palm olein is the liquid fraction obtained from the fractionation of palm oil. A second fractionation of palm olein yields a product of higher iodine value (IV) and is called double-fractionated palm olein. Single fractionated palm oein may also be of high IV and thus oleins of IV greater than 56 are also known as […]

The most crucial components of soap are C12-C18 fatty acids which contribute to detergency, cleansing power and foamability of the final product. Palm oil kernel oil are the major sources for C16-C18 and C12-C14 fatty acids respectively. A combination of palm oil and palm kernel oil in appropriate proportions is necessary to produce a good […]

Elaeis guineensis and Elaies oleifera are the two species of oil palm. In Malaysia, E. guineensis is the major crop planted since it produces high oil yield. However, E. oleifera produces higher unsaturated oil compared to E. guineensis but has lower yield. E. oleifera also has the advantage of slow height increment. In order to introgress the high unsaturation oil trait into E. guineensis, oil palm breeders […]