History of Palm Oil

History

Oil palm tree (Elaeis guineensis)

Palm oil (from the African oil palm, Elaeis guineensis) has long been recognized in West African countries, and is widely used as a cooking oil. European merchants trading with West Africa occasionally purchased palm oil for use in Europe, but since the oil was of a lower quality than olive oil, palm oil remained rare outside West Africa.^{[citation needed]} In the Asante Confederacy, state-owned slaves built large plantations of oil palm trees, while in the neighbouring Kingdom of Dahomey, King Ghezo passed a law in 1856 forbidding his subjects from cutting down oil palms.
Palm oil became a highly sought-after commodity by British traders, for use as an industrial lubricant for machinery during Britain's Industrial Revolution^{[citation needed]}. Palm oil formed the basis of soap products, such as Lever Brothers' (now Unilever) "Sunlight Soap", and the American Palmolive brand.^[11] By c. 1870, palm oil constituted the primary export of some West African countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, although this was overtaken by cocoa in the 1880s.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Research

In the 1960s, research and development (R&D) in oil palm breeding began to expand after Malaysia's Department of Agriculture established an exchange program with West African economies and four private plantations formed the Oil Palm Genetics Laboratory.^[12] The government also established Kolej Serdang, which became the Universiti Pertanian Malaysia (UPM) in the 1970s to train agricultural and agro-industrial engineers and agro-business graduates to conduct research in the field.
In 1979, following strong lobbying from oil palm planters and support from the Malaysian Agricultural Research and Development Institute (MARDI) and UPM, the government set up the Palm Oil Research Institute of Malaysia (Porim).^[13] B.C. Sekhar was instrumental in helping Porim recruit and train scientists to undertake R&D in oil palm tree breeding, palm oil nutrition and potential oleochemical use. Sekhar, as founder and chairman, pushed Porim to be a public-and-private-coordinated institution. As a result, Porim (renamed Malaysian Palm Oil Board in 2000) became Malaysia's top research entity commercializing 20% of its innovations, compared to 5% among local universities.^{[citation needed]} While MPOB has gained international prominence, its relevance is dependent on churning out breakthrough findings in the dynamic oil crop genetics, dietary fat nutrition and process engineering landscapes.

[edit] Nutrition

Further information: palmitic acid

Many processed foods contain palm oil as an ingredient.^[14]
Palm oil is composed of fatty acids, esterified with glycerol just like any ordinary fat. It is high in saturated fatty acids. Palm oil gives its name to the 16-carbon saturated fatty acid palmitic acid. Monounsaturated oleic acid is also a constituent of palm oil. Unrefined palm oil is a large natural source of tocotrienol, part of the vitamin E family.^[15]
The approximate concentration of fatty acids (FAs) in palm oil is as follows:^[16]

Fatty acid content of palm oil
Type of fatty acid			pct
Palmitic saturated C16			44.3%
Stearic saturated C18			4.6%
Myristic saturated C14			1.0%
Oleic monounsaturated C18			38.7%
Linoleic polyunsaturated C18			10.5%
Other/Unknown			0.9%
red: Saturated; orange: Mono unsaturated; blue: Poly unsaturated