Palm oil is one of the richest natural plant source of carotenes with the concentration from 500-700 ppm. The production of palm oil in 1992 was 6.4 million tonnes and it is projected that Malaysian production will reach over 8 million tonnes by the year 2000. Hence the potential availability of carotenes in the year 2000 is about 4800 tonnes. Currently, however all the carotenes are destroyed during the refining process. In view of the importance of carotenes, and in order to preserve the carotenes in palm oil, a process has been developed to produce deacidified and deodorized red palm oil*.

Main Researcher:Dr Choo Yuen May