Breeding strategies for oil palm

Abstract

In Malaysia, the total area of oil palm in production is about 1.4 million hectares and the production of palm oil is approximately 4.1 million tons and about 85% of the product is for export (Pantzaris, 1987). It is expected that the amount of palm oil production will reach 7.5 million tons in the year 2,000. In 1985, the total palm oil production in the world was 6.8 million tons and Malaysia contributed 4.1 million tons which is 60% of the total. In recent years, besides Malaysia, many other countries have also expanded their oil palm cultivation and therefore the marketing of oil palm is likely to face some problem in the near future. In addition, other countries that produce soybean, groundnut, sunflower, rapeseed and other types of vegetable oils also try to gain a greater share of the cooking oil market. In fact due to the low cost of production of palm oil compared to other annual oil crops, it has created a great threat to the soybean oil market. The recent campaign of the American Soybean Association to ask the American government to list palm oil as a saturated oil is an attempt to create fear among people by saying that consumption of palm oil will cause health hazard. This is the trump card for smearing palm oil by saying that it is a saturated oil even though results of the chemical analysis show that palm oil consists of 46% saturated (mainly palmitic), 43% monounsaturated (oleic) and 11% polyunsaturated (linoleic ) fatty acids (Chong, 1987). Nevertheless , some experiments have shown that palm oil, unlike many other dietary fats, is cholesterol free and in fact the composition of various fatty acids is good for the health (de Witt, 1988).