Month: February 2020

Bactris gasipaes also known as peach palm or pejibaye is an important food crop in the humid lowlands of Central and South America. This species gives two edible products; starchy fruits and palm heart (salad). There is a great pressure to diversify the current plantation crops which are largely dominated by oil palm, rubber and … Read more

Vitamin E is a fat-soluble vitamin, naturally present in small amounts in vegetable oils. It consists of eight tocopherol and tocotrienol isomers, namely, α-, β-, γ-, δ-tocopherols and tocotrienols. Vitamin E acts as an antioxidant and plays an important role in the stabilization of oils and fats. Vitamin E components in palm oil especially γ- and … Read more

Oil yield (OY) is the most important selection criteria in breeding improvement programme. One way to increase OY is through increasing the bunch index (BI) besides increasing the oil to bunch ratio. BI is derived from the ratio of bunch dry matter to total dry matter production (BDM/BDM+VDM). Estimation of the parameter requires the measurement … Read more

Stearoyl-ACP desaturase (SAD) is an important fatty acid biosynthetic enzyme responsible for the production of oleic acid. It is a soluble enzyme in the plastid which introduces a cis double bond into saturated stearoyl-ACP (18:0-ACP) at the ∆9 position to produce mono-unsaturated oleoyl-ACP (18:1-ACP) (Figure 1). It has an important housekeeping role for producing unsaturated … Read more

Novel palm oil compositions are needed to meet the demand of the expanding oil business and changing market requirements. Genetic engineering provides the opportunity to diversify the use and improve the economic value of palm oil. Reported successes in changing fatty acid compositions in other crops provide examples of how in vitro gene technology can … Read more

Malaysia is facing an acute shortage of agricultural land. One of the alternatives is to go for marginal areas such as hilly land and peat. Through R&D, these areas can be cultivated with oil palm with good returns in spite of high development cost. In the hilly areas, oil palm planted on terraces is much … Read more

The ever increasing cost of production and poor commodity prices as a result of greater market competition have compelled the plantation industry to look for improved production techniques to reduce costs in order to maximize profits. One way towards achieving the above objective is through mechanization of the harvesting process. With mechanization, workers’ productivity and … Read more

Current commodities market competition and agriculture regulations are forcing the oil palm industry to seek more competitive management methods to produce palm oil. With the development of geographic information system (GIS), global positioning system (GPS), variable-rate technology (VRT) and remote sensing technology (RS), many oil palm plantations in this country have started adopting precision agriculture … Read more

Basal stem rot (BSR) caused by Ganoderma boninense, which is a serious disease, especially in the replanted areas from old oil palm and coconut, remains the major disease of oil palm in Southeast Asia (Idris et al., 2003). Ganoderma is a saprophyte that can infect a living palm if there is a large enough inoculum. The … Read more

Basal stem rot (BSR) disease caused by species of Ganoderma is presently the most prevalent and devastating disease in oil palm cultivation, especially in mature palm areas in Malaysia. Some of the estate practices for controlling this disease consist of surgical, removal of infected palms, soil mounding, fungicide treatment or combination of these methods (Ariffin … Read more