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AndresGonzàlez(15.12.2016)

UniversityofNaturalResourcesand

LifeSciences

BOKU

DivisionofPlantBreeding

ReportforTheLecture

AspectsofProductQualityinPlantProduction

Oil–PalmTree

AndresGonzalez

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OilPalmTreeVEGETABLESPECIE

Order:Arecales

Family:Arecaceae

Genus:Elaeis

Species:Elaeisguineensis,oleifera

Commonname:OilpalmTree,Palmadeaceite.

ORIGIN/HISTORY

It is generally agreed that the Oil Palm (Elaeis guineensis) originated in the tropical rain forest region of West Africa, runs through the southern latitudes of Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo and into the equatorial region of Angola and the Congo. The processing of oil palm fruits has been practiced in Africa for thousands of years, and the oil produced, highly coloured and flavoured, is an essential ingredient in much of the traditional West African cuisine. During the 14th to 17th centuries some palm fruits were taken to the Americas and from there to the Far East. The plant appears to have thrived better in the Far East, thus providing the largest commercial production of an economic crop far removed from its centre of origin (FAO, 2004).

BOTANICALDESCRIPTION

Palm oil is a diploid (2n=32) oleaginous tropical crop, is a single stemmed palm which bears a single shoot or apical meristem. Mature palms can grow up to 20 m tall. The leaves are in pine shape and reach sizes between 3-5 m long. As monoecious plant male and female flowers occur separately on the same tree, the flowers are present as an inflorescence on which can be found up to 250 spikelets that can have about 12-30 flowers each. The palm fruit takes five to six months to mature from pollination (entomophily) to maturity, fruits are reddish, about the size of a large plum, and grows in large bunches. Each fruit is made up of an oily, fleshy outer layer (the pericarp), with a single seed (the Kernel), also rich in oil.

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ECONOMICALVALUEPalm oil became the principal cargo for slave ships after abolition of the slave trade. As people in Europe began to take sanitation and hygiene seriously, demand for soap increased, resulting in the demand for vegetable oil suitable for soap manufacture and other technical uses, for which palm oil was found suitable. In the early 1870s exports of palm oil from the Niger Delta were 25 000 to 30 000 tonnes per annum and by 1911 the British West African territories exported 87 000 tonnes (FAO, 2004). In 1917 the first commercial oil palm plantation took place in Tennamaran Malaysia, becoming today the foundations of the immense palm oil industry. Nowadays the oil palm production reach an importance stage, in which 1 out ten products that normally are found in supermarket contain traces or oil from the palm tree. Such relevance, make this plant crop a great commodity, ranking it in the second mots trade oil commodity after soy. Over 90% of the total palm oil production, is produce in Malaysia and Indonesia. In 2006 approximately 32 million of tons of palm oil were produced between Malaysia and Indonesia, by 2013 the production of palm oil increased up to 50 million of tons only that year (palm oil world, 2013). This significant increment was due because of the used of palm oil as a primer material for the production of biofuel. Palm oil is an important primer material for the manufacturing of food products, from cooking products such as oil for frying up to confectionary as well as plays an important role in the cosmetic industry. But now palm oil has a major role in the energy industry, becoming the base product for the production of biofuel. Thus, the demand of palm oil will increase substantial as humanity runs out of fossil fuels, this for one hand have a positive impact for palm oil producers, but also this development has brought and will bring significant environmental cost especially for the rain forest and the animal species that are been deprive of its natural habitat.

PALMOILCHARACTERISTICS The crude oil, extracted from the fruit mesocarp by pressure, contain considerable proportion of water, fiber and cell debris. Crude palm oil is characteristically deep orange in colour and is semi-solid in the prevailing ambient temperatures, palm oil has a characteristic odor which has been variously described as “sweetish and somewhat sickly” or “nutty”. Some samples have been said to possess an odor resembling that of violets. The odors are doubtless partly due to the presence of products of the beta-ionone type from the oxidation of the carotenoid pigments which are responsible for the colour. The major fatty acid from the mesocarp oil is palmitic acid and oleic acid, followed by linoleic, stearic and myristic acids. Fatty acid composition of the mesocarp fat in the immature fruit is very different, although palmitic acid is the major acid even at 8 weeks after pollination, a large proportion of linoleic acid and a few percent of linolenic acid are present but only traces of oleic acid. The main fatty acid build-up occurs at 19-20 weeks after pollination (Cornelius, 1977).

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In contrast to palm oil fruit, the characteristics and properties of palm kernel oil resemble those of coconut oil in a general way, being a colourless to brownish-yellow oil, solidifying in temperate climates to a white or yellowish fat which, in the crude state, is often somewhat darker in colour. Its fatty acid content is mainly lauric acid that may vary depending upon the quality of the kernels from which it has been extracted. The solid fat, although having a higher melting point than coconut oil, has a less brittle consistency and is greasier. The crude oil has a strong, very characteristic and tenacious taste and smell. Palm kernel oil contains a considerably smaller proportion of acids having a lower molecular weight than lauric acid. Furthermore, palm kernel oil has a considerably greater proportion of oleic acid and therefore has a higher iodine value than coconut oil (Cornelius, 1977). On average, palm oil has almost equal amounts of saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. The proportion of saturated fatty acids compares favourably to the saturated fatty acids content. Palm oil only contains very little amounts of trans fatty acids (<1 per cent of the total fat content). Because of its plant origin, variability in fatty acid composition may occur due to geographical factors, for example soil, weather and the type of oil palm tree (Palm oil food, 2016). GENERALPROCESINGOFPALMOILfor each hectare of palm oil that is harvested year around, produces in average 10 tons of fruitlets, which can yield 3000kg of pericarp oil and 750kg of seeds (Kernels). From these amounts, only 1000kg of palm oil is extracted year/ha and 250kg of kernel oi year/ha (Retrieved from Palmöl, 2016).

1. Harvesting Harvesting commence 30 months after plantation when fruitlets reach maturity, this involves the cutting of the bunch from the tree and allowing it to fall to the ground by gravity, or with mechanised cutters that place then immediately in the transportation wagon. The bunch weighing between 25 - 30kg, is loading and unloading into and out of transport containers, here there are further opportunities for the fruit to be bruised. Once the bunch is in the transportation wagon, those are taken to the main reception site in the palm oil Mill.

2. Bunch Reception

Fresh fruit arrives from the field as bunches or loose fruit. The fresh fruit is normally emptied into wooden boxes suitable for weighing on a scale or metal containers. Large installations use weighbridges to weigh materials in trucks.

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3. Bunch Sterilization

Sterilization is the use of high-temperature steam treatment in order to lose the fruit and disinfect method. sterilization uses pressurized steam about 75ºC by 90 minutes. These sterilization process serves several purposes.

• Heat treatment destroys oil-splitting enzymes and arrests hydrolysis and autoxidation.

• The wet heat weakens the fruit stem and makes it easy to remove the fruit from bunches on shaking or tumbling in the threshing machine.

• Heat helps to solidify proteins in which the oil-bearing cells are microscopically dispersed.

• Fruit cooking weakens the pulp structure, softening it and making it easier to detach the fibrous material and its contents during the digestion process.

• The moisture introduced by the steam acts chemically to break down gums and resins. The gums and resins cause the oil to foam during frying.

• When high-pressure steam is used for sterilization, the heat causes the moisture in the nuts to expand. When the pressure is reduced the contraction of the nut leads to the detachment of the kernel from the shell wall, thus loosening the kernels within their shells.

4. Threshing In a mechanised system, a rotating drum or fixed drum equipped with rotary beater bars detach the fruit from the bunch, leaving the spikelets on the stem and loosening the fruitlets.

5. Digestion of the fruit Digestion is the process of releasing the palm oil in the fruit through the rupture or breaking down of the oil-bearing cells. The digester commonly consists of a steam-heated cylindrical vessel fitted with a central rotating shaft carrying a number of beater (stirring) arms, the temperature of the stem is set to a 90ºC and this process last around 20 minutes.

6. Pressing There are distinct methods of extracting oil from the digested material. One system uses mechanical presses and is called the ‘dry’ method. The other called the ‘wet’ method uses hot water to leach out the oil. In the ‘dry’ method the objective of the extraction stage is to squeeze the oil out of a mixture of oil, moisture, fibre and nuts by applying mechanical pressure on the digested mash. In this stage is the separation of the kernel and recovered of such.

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7. Clarification and Drying of Oil The main purpose of clarification is to separate the oil from its entrained impurities. The fluid coming out of the press is a mixture of palm oil, water, cell debris, fibrous material and ‘non-oily solids’. Because of the non-oily solids, the mixture is very thick (viscous). Hot water is therefore added to the press output mixture to thin it. The dilution (addition of water) provides a barrier causing the heavy solids to fall to the bottom of the container while the lighter oil droplets flow through the watery mixture to the top.

(FAO, 2004), (Verheye, 2012) Depending of the production scale, palm oil can be use directly as a cooking supplement, or is redirected for oil refinement and subsequently use in different types of industries.

ReferencesCornelius, J. (1977). Palm oil and palm kernel oil. Progress in the Chemistry of Fats and Other Lipids, 15(1), 5-27. European Palm Oil Alliance. Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://www.palmoilandfood.eu/en/fatty-acid-composition. Food and agriculture organization of the United Nations (FAO). (2004). Yearbook of the United Nations 2002 Yearbook of the United Nations, 1470-1471. Official Palm Oil Information Source. Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://www.palmoilworld.org/about_malaysian-industry.html The oil palm. Retrieved December 10, 2016, from http://www.forumpalmoel.org/en/ueber-palmoel.html W. Verheye. (2012). SOILS PLANT GROWTH AND PLANT PRODUCTION, Growth and Production of Oil palm. Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems (EOLSS), Developed under the Auspices of the UNESCO, Eolss Publishers, Paris, France.