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Loose fruits are currently collected by hand picking or raking. This technique is not only labour demanding and time-consuming but also tedious. The collection process requires the worker to squat and stand up repeatedly, which cause fatigue. On the average, the time taken for the worker to collect loose fruits is about 28% from the … Read more

It is a challenging to task to evacuate bunches from oil palm planted on peat or soggy areas. Apart from low bearing capacity of the peat, undecomposed or semi-decomposed logs along the harvesting paths require a specially designed vehicle to tackle this problem. The new concept vehicle is specifically built for infield collection on peat … Read more

Despite the advent of technologies, oil palm management often need to spend an average of one week in preparing monthly performance report of their estates (Malek,2002;Paimin,2008). This is essentially an opportunity cost to the managers and supervisors for not attending field operations. More importantly, cost overruns and other operational inefficiencies are only discovered at the … Read more

Bagworms (Lepidoptera:Psychidae) are leaf eating caterpillars characterised by the possession of bag, built from pieces of dried plant materials such as leaves and small twigs ( Barlow,1982). Their outbreak are common in several states in Malaysia and have a significant economic impact on oil palm yield. According to Wood et al. (1973), 43% of yield decline … Read more

The beneficial effects of leguminous cover crops (LCC0 and its use in oil palm plantation are commonly accepted. Besides improving soil fertility by fixing nitrogen and making it available to the main crop and reduce competition from noxious weeds, it also improves palm grwoth and reduces the immaturity period. In peat soil areas, the need … Read more