Research & Development

The Process	Research & Development	Uses Of Oil Palm	In The Near Future

The rising world demand for palm oil together with the increasing price of crude palm oil has made oil palm plantation a very important agricultural activity in Malaysia . Palm oil production has been increasing over the years, from 2.6 million tonnes in 1980 to 6.094 million tonnes in 1990. The amount of palm oil production reached a peak of 9.069 million tonnes in 1997.

The reasons for this tremendous increase in palm oil production are the ideal climatic conditions, mechanization and, research and development.

Research and development have expanded the possible uses of oil palm and also produced oil palms with the ideal genetic traits. High yielding oil palms, which grow tall slowly, allow the fruits to be harvested over a longer period of time. Tissue culture has also made it possible to attain a greater consistency in the characteristics of productive plants and allowed plantation owners to obtain young plants much sooner.

Mechanization has also contributed in the increase in the palm oil production. The use of machines to replace labour intensive activities has improved the productivity of the labourers. Moreover, mechanization has not only reduced the costs of production and labour dependence, but has also served to make the job more attractive.

Some examples are:

• Some plantations make use of mechanical loose fruit collector invented by PORIM which is able to collect about 1.2kg of loose fruit per minute, leaving less debris.
• The CRABBIE is an implement of infield mechanical loading of fresh fruit bunches. The CRABBIE is operated by one man and can pick up fresh fruit bunches of 50kg with each mechanical arm. It can collect up to 11 tonnes of fruit in a day.