This study provided the basic needs of parameters estimation for nonlinear growth model such as partial derivatives of each model, determination of initial values for each parameter and statistical tests of industrial usage. Twelve nonlinear growth models and its partial derivatives for oil palm yield growth are presented in this study. The parameters are estimated using the Marquardt iterative...

Received Jan 1, 2018 Revised Mar 15, 2018 Accepted Mar 29, 2018 Disease in palm oil sector is one of the major concerns because it affects the production and economy losses to Malaysia. Diseases appear as spots on the leaf and if not treated on time, cause the growth of the palm oil tree. This work presents the use of digital image processing technique for classification oil palm leaf disease s...

In this study, twelve fungal lipase producing strains belonging to Aspergillus, Penicillium, Trichoderma and Mucor genera were isolated from palm oil mill effluent composts. The Aspergillus spp. were more frequent (42%) and was present in all the samples assayed. Mucor sp. was the least encountered (8.3%).The lipase producing profile showed that Trichoderma (8.07-8.24 u/mL) and Aspergillus (6.2...

The presence of lard in vegetable oils like palm oil is serious matter for certain communities like Muslim and Hindis. Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy has been used for determination of lard in palm oil. Lard, palm oil and their binary mixtures in the neat form was scanned at mid infrared region (4,000 – 650 cm-1) using attenuated total reflectance accessory as convenient samplin...

Our knowledge about land-use impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem functioning is mostly limited to single trophic levels, leaving us uncertain about whole-community biodiversity-ecosystem functioning relationships. We analyse consequences of the globally important land-use transformation from tropical forests to oil palm plantations. Species diversity, density and biomass of invertebrate commu...

Palm pressed fiber (PPF) is a by-product from oil extraction of oil palm fruits. It has unique characteristics resulting from the combination of palm mesocarp fiber, kernel shell and crushed kernel. The present study on different extraction methods for PPF indicated that conventional hexane cold extraction would be the more preferable method compared to soxhlet and reflux method due to the yiel...

Business finance has been a major problem facing most businesses, both the small and large companies as well as the medium ones. Small and Medium Scale Enterprises (SMEs) are no exceptions of the problems faced by businesses. These enterprises are mostly managed by low income earners. Some of these enterprises cannot grow into large companies because of lack of funds. The objectives of the stud...

The oil palm mesocarp contains an endogenous lipase which is strongly activated at low temperature. Lipase activity is thus very conveniently assayed by prior exposure of the fruits to low temperature. More than 100 oil palm samples from the germplasm collection of the Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia (now known as the Malaysian Palm Oil Board) were screened for non-esterified fatty acid...

This study identifies the potential greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions, which can be achieved by optimizing the use of residues in the life cycle of palm oil derived biodiesel. This is done through compilation of data on existing and prospective treatment technologies as well as practical experiments on methane potentials from empty fruit bunches. Methane capture from the anaerobic digestion of pa...

A growing body of evidence highlights the close association between nutrition and human health. Fat is an essential macronutrient, and vegetable oils, such as palm oil, are widely used in the food industry and highly represented in the human diet. Palmitic acid, a saturated fatty acid, is the principal constituent of refined palm oil. In the last few decades, controversial studies have reported...