The American oil palm, Elaeis oleifera (Figure 1) possesses attributes of interest such as slow height increment rate (Hardon and Tan, 1969; Obasola, 1973; Meunier and Boutin, 1975; Tam et al., 1977) and high I.V. (Hardon, 1969; Macfarlane et al., 1975). Lately, its high carotene content has been advocated as potentially useful for the pharmaceutical industry (Choo and Yusof, 1996). However, this species has not been commercially exploited simply because of its extremely low oil yield (ca. 0.5 t ha-1yr-1). Nevertheless, it is believed that this oil as produced coupled with some pretreatment can be encapsulated for pharmaceutical applications (Figure 2).

Main Researcher: Dr Mohd Din Amiruddin