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Mechanical harvesting of oil palm fresh fruit bunches (FFB) remains an issue that needs to be solved. The current methods involve the use of a chisel or sickle, where the use of such tools require manual labour and this activity is a tedious job. This paper describes a newly innovated mechanical cutter which complements the … Read more

A large fraction of palm-environment interactions occurs below-ground in the rhizosphere. This includes palm roots and the portion of the soil and soil microbes that are influenced by roots. Unfortunately, rhizosphere processes are nearly invisible from the surface and destructive root excavations could modify the physiological processes. Main Researcher: Dr Mohd Haniff Harun     Email: mhaniff@mpob.gov.my

Oil palm yield potential is a function of inherent soil fertility status and very dependent on nutrient use efficiency. The soil fertility status would involve the understanding of interacting factors such as soil depth, soil structure, soil pH, soil organic matter and quantity of soil micro fauna and flora. In many cases, the nutrient use … Read more

Conventional methods of assessing foliar nutrient content of oil palm are costly, time consuming and involve frond destruction. Recently, the availability of modern technologies such as global positioning system (GPS), remote sensing (RS) and geographic information system (GIS) have created an opportunity to revolutionize the method of assessing oil palm foliar nutrient content. Main Researcher: … Read more

Phosphorus (P) deficiency is a major limiting factor in many acid Malaysian soils. The amount of P in these soils are either inherently low or are fixed in forms that are unavailable to plants. Most studies demonstrated that more P is required on inland soil than the coastal soils in order to achieve a reasonable … Read more

The rhinoceros beetle, Oryctes rhinoceros is a major pest of oil palm in Malaysia. As the replanting activities increase over recent years, infestation of oil palm with Oryctes correspondingly increases. The entomopathogenic Oryctes rhinoceros virus was discovered 40 years ago in Malaysia (Huger, 1966). It was then successfully introduced into many South Pacific countries to … Read more

Palm oil is an important product in the Malaysian economy. In most applications, foods and non-foods, refined and/or fractionated palm oil products are utilized. Crude palm oil contains a small amount of nutritionally valuable phytochemicals, including vitamin E (tocopherol and tocotrienol), phytosterols and squalene. During the process of palm oil refining, palm fatty acid distillate … Read more

Squalene is a minor constituent of oils and fats. It is a triterpenoid aliphatic hydrocarbon with six unconjugated double bonds (Figure 1), first discovered in shark liver oil in 1906 by Mitsumaru Tsujimoto. It is present in human tissue and plant oils in small amounts. Squalene is a valuable commercial product and traditionally produced from … Read more

Oil palm industries generate at least 30 million tonnes of lignocellulosic biomass annually in the form of oil palm trunks (OPT), empty fruit bunches (EFB), oil palm fronds (OPF) and palm pressed fibres (PPF). At present, the biomass is either left to rot in the plantations to provide organic nutrients to the oil palm trees … Read more

Lignin is a phenolic polymeric complex that attaches with cellulose and hemicellulose. Whereas, cellulose is a linear polymer of glucose (six carbon sugar) and hemicellulose is a branched polymer of xylose (five carbon sugar). Extraction of these components from lignocellulosic materials, with minimal waste by-products and with environmentally friendly process, has to be taken into … Read more