An active heterogeneous Al2O3 modified MgZnO (MgZnAlO) catalyst was prepared and the catalytic activity was investigated for the transesterification of different vegetable oils (refined palm oil, waste cooking palm oil, palm kernel oil and coconut oil) with methanol to produce biodiesel. The catalyst was characterized by using X-ray diffraction, Fourier transform infrared spectra, thermo gravim...

Many major corporations and countries have made commitments to purchase or produce only "sustainable" palm oil, a commodity responsible for substantial tropical forest loss. Sustainability certification is the tool most used to fulfill these procurement policies, and around 20% of global palm oil production was certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) in 2017. However, the eff...

Oil palm is the world's leading source of vegetable oil and fat. Dura, Pisifera and Tenera are three forms of oil palm. The genome sequence of Pisifera is available whereas the Dura form has not been sequenced yet. We sequenced the genome of one elite Dura palm, and re-sequenced 17 palm genomes. The assemble genome sequence of the elite Dura tree contained 10,971 scaffolds and was 1.701 Gb in l...

One key ingredient used in the formulation of aquafeed is fish oil, which is produced from small marine pelagic fish and represents a finite fishery resource. At the present time, global fish oil production has reached a plateau and is not expected to increase beyond current levels. Recent estimates suggest that fish oils may be unable to meet demands from the rapidly growing aquaculture indust...

The inexorable expansion of oil palm plantations has been a major driver of biodiversity loss in the tropics. This is particularly evident in Malaysia and Indonesia, where the majority of the world’s oil palm is cultivated. In Latin America oil palm acreage has also been steadily increasing, especially in countries such as Colombia, the largest producer by far. However, information on the biolo...

More than half the world's rainforest has been lost to agriculture since the Industrial Revolution. Among the most widespread tropical crops is oil palm (Elaeis guineensis): global production now exceeds 35 million tonnes per year. In Malaysia, for example, 13% of land area is now oil palm plantation, compared with 1% in 1974. There are enormous pressures to increase palm oil production for foo...

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...

Tropical forests are being rapidly altered by logging, and cleared for agriculture. Understanding the effects of these land use changes on soil fungi, which play vital roles in the soil ecosystem functioning and services, is a major conservation frontier. Using 454-pyrosequencing of the ITS1 region of extracted soil DNA, we compared communities of soil fungi between unlogged, once-logged, and t...

Oil palm trees are important economic crops in Malaysia and other tropical areas. The number of oil palm trees in a plantation area is important information for predicting the yield of palm oil, monitoring the growing situation of palm trees and maximizing their productivity, etc. In this paper, we propose a deep learning based framework for oil palm tree detection and counting using high-resol...

Oxidized unsaturated fatty acids may contribute to the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. In the present study, we examined the effects of heated palm oil mixed with 2% cholesterol diet on serum lipid profile, homocysteine and thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) levels in estrogen-deficient rats. Twenty-four female Sprague Dawley rats were ovariectomized and then were divided equally ...