BACKGROUND The high amount of saturated fatty acids (SFA) coupled with the rising availability and consumption of palm oil have lead to the assumption that palm oil contributes to the increased prevalence of cardiovascular diseases worldwide. We aimed at systematically synthesising the association of palm oil consumption with cardiovascular disease risk and cardiovascular disease-specific morta...

Rats conditioned to eating fixed-size meals (meals at 7 AM and 7 PM), consuming diets rich in palm oil or sunflower seed oil, were used to study the metabolism of chylomicrons and hepatic very low density lipoproteins (VLDL) as a function of time after meal consumption. Rats fed a palm oil diet had higher serum triacylglycerol levels at 7 AM, before the meal (1.96 +/- 0.25 mM vs. 1.09 +/- 0.09 ...

Six hundred day old unsexed broiler chicks were used in a 35-day trial to compare the effects of soybean oil, palm oil and fish oil supplementation on the performance of broilers in terms of feed intake, weight gain and feed conversion. The chicks were randomly distributed following a completely randomized design in four groups having three replications per treatment. Each treatment had 150 bir...

In order to quantify the effects of forests to oil palm conversion occurring in the tropics on land–atmosphere carbon, water and energy fluxes, we develop a new perennial crop sub-model CLM-Palm for simulating a palm plant functional type (PFT) within the framework of the Community Land Model (CLM4.5). CLM-Palm is tested here on oil palm only but is meant of generic interest for other palm crop...

Oil thermoxidation during deep frying generates harmful oxidative free radicals that induce inflammation and increase the risk of hypertension. This study aimed to investigate the effect of repeatedly heated palm oil on blood pressure, aortic morphometry, and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) expression in rats. Male Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into five groups: control, fresh pal...

Oil palm cultivation is frequently cited as a major threat to tropical biodiversity as it is centered on some of the world's most biodiverse regions. In this report, Web of Science was used to find papers on oil palm published since 1970, which were assigned to different subject categories to visualize their research focus. Recent years have seen a broadening in the scope of research, with a sl...

Genetic diversity and patterns of population structure of the 94 oil palm lines were investigated using species-specific simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers. We designed primers for 63 SSR loci based on their flanking sequences and conducted amplification in 94 oil palm DNA samples. The amplification result showed that a relatively high level of genetic diversity was observed between oil palm ...

In the past few months considerable prominence has been given in the local media over the beneficial qualities of palm oil and in particular some of its health promoting properties. This has been a latent response to the campaign against palm oil by the American soyabean lobby as well as the aborted ASA proposed Tropical Oils Labelling Bill. The. national concern over this issue is understandab...

BACKGROUND Basal stem rot (BSR) disease caused by the fungus Ganoderma boninense is the most serious disease affecting the oil palm; this is because the disease escapes the early disease detection. The biocontrol agent Trichoderma harzianum can protect the disease only at the early stage of the disease. In the present study, the expression levels of three oil palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) chit...

Aiming at generating a comprehensive genomic database on Elaeis spp., our group is leading several R&D initiatives with Elaeis guineensis (African oil palm) and Elaeis oleifera (American oil palm), including the whole-genome sequencing of the last. Genome size estimates currently available for this genus are controversial, as they indicate that American oil palm genome is about half the size of...