| Interview |
More than 100 companies
commercialised MPOB’s technology
june-july, 2020 | The Health
21
The Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) wants
more companies, especially SMEs, to take advantage
of its research breakthroughs by commercialising
them.
“Come talk to us,” said MPOB Director-General Dr
Ahmad Parveez Ghulam Kadir, adding that currently,
MPOB has more than 670 products and only 30 per
cent of them have been commercialised.”
“We have almost 212 technologies which have been
commercialised. But this does not mean there are 212
companies, as there are some companies that took up
more than one technology. I can say, there are more
than 100 companies which have come forward to use
our technology,” said Parveez.
Although there are a lot of efforts being made to
promote the technologies, the director-general of
MPOB believed that there was a lot more that could be
done to improve.
The annual Transfer of Technology (ToT) seminar,
which is organised by MPOB, will be held online
as a webinar this year on July 7, 2020 at MPOB’s
headquarters in Bandar Baru Bangi to promote more
technologies. Previously, the seminar was physically
organized at our headquarters and attended by more
than 200 participants and potential entrepreneurs.
However due to Covid-19 and the Movement Control
Order by the government, this year the seminar will
be organized online as a webinar. Interested parties
could register for the ToT Seminar via our MPOB
website at http://palmoilis.mpob.gov.my/TOTV3/.
More people in business are encouraged to use the
technology and commercialise it as this will mean
getting better value from Malaysian palm oil.
The potential products of palm oil are phenomenal.
It is said to be used for food and non-food products,
such as cosmetic content, for cleaning agents such
as soaps or detergents, vitamin A and E and even
for biodiesel. What adds more value to these oil
palm products is that we can be assured it is from
sustainable palm oil.
MPOB has achieved significant breakthroughs
to increase the quality of palm oil, resulting in higher
yields. It has two of the new technologies. These
technologies are through its research on oil palm’s
whole genome programme, i.e. the discovery of
mesocarp (shell) gene and tissue culture abnormality
marker highlighting the healthy and hefty benefits
of palm oil. MPOB’s technology based on the shell
gene discovery uses an optimized PCR approach
opportunity to buy this oil at an excellent
rate.
The World Health Organization (WHO)
recently advised adults to avoid palm
oil in their diet during the Covid-19
pandemic. What is your view on this?
The positive cases of Covid-19 are almost
reaching six million people worldwide, and
the majority of them are actually in the EU.
I think those countries do not consume
palm oil. I mean, most of the palm oil goes
for bio-diesel. Nevertheless, that is their
propaganda. WHO is supposed to be a
reputable organisation.
Palm oil has been regarded as not
nutritionally ideal and imposes negative
effects on lipid profile due to its SFA content.
The misconception on saturated fatty
acids (SFA) began in the late 1950s, when
Ancel Keys (a physiologist) found that SFA
increased total cholesterol, a surrogate
marker of cardiovascular disease risk. This
was widely accepted for over five decades
such that saturated fats are considered bad
for health. However, emerging research
findings, published over the recent years
show otherwise. For example, diet rich in
palm olein was found not to affect lipid
profiles in healthy adults compared to other
that allows planters to tell whether a seed is going
to develop to become a dura, pisifera or tenera
tree. Previously, breeders have to wait till the palm
produces fruits, normally after three years of planting,
before they could physically tell whether the palm
is a dura, pisifera or tenera and will be very costly to
replace them if they were non-tenera.
Previous extensive researches have demonstrated
that tenera seeds can produce a higher yield by 30 per
cent as compared to dura seeds which produce less oil
and pisifera seeds which might not even provide any
oil following several years of planting.
“From that, we can have better quality control for
companies producing seeds,” said Parveez adding he
hopes it will increase the yield among smallholders as
well.
SureSawit™ SHELL Test is the first commercially
available genotyping test for the oil palm industry.
Parveez said it was a technology by MPOB licensed
to Orion Biosains. The trial allows oil palm seed
producers and growers to precisely determine the
tenera, dura and pisifera fruit form of a seedling.
The second technology is called tissue culture
technology. The technique requires the use of
immature unopened leaves from an oil palm plant
which will then be developed into plantlets in petri
dishes and test-tubes containing special hormones
and nutrients. The regenerated plantlets are called
clone or ramets of an oil palm plant. It has been proven
that tissue culture-based clones can also produce
another 30 per cent extra oil compared to normal
seed-derived tenera, said Parveez. Using our genomebased
tissue culture abnormality marker technology
(SureSawit™ KARMA), abnormal clones could be
easily identified and culled in the lab or nurseries and
ensuring only the normal high yielding clones are
planted in the field.
Besides the above two genome-based
technologies, there are over 600 more technologies.
For example, he added: “One of the very commonly
used technology by MPOB is for a motorised fruit
harvester or cutter called Cantas. Another very
useful and widely used technology is to produce
biodiesel from palm oil where currently in Malaysia the
commercial diesel sold at the petrol station already
contained 10% palm biodiesel. MPOB’s scientists also
based on their more than 35 years of experience and
field trials have formulated and commercialized six
deferent fertilisers,” he said.
unsaturated vegetable oils, namely olive
oil, canola oil, soybean oil and high oleic
sunflower oil on serum lipid profile in
healthy human adults.
More importantly what WHO and all
others thinking alike need to know is that
palm oil has a natural balance of saturated
and unsaturated fats which makes it
suitable for various food applications. It
does not require hydrogenation which is
the major cause of a more fearful fat which
is the trans fatty acids. Palm oil remains
to be best alternative to replace trans fatty
acids in many food applications. Palm oil
is rich in phytonutrients with numerous
health benefits.
How critical is the people’s
understanding of palm oil?
There is constant advice to replace
SFA with PUFA. However, based on
experimental studies, risk of lipid
peroxidation may increase with high
(>11%E) PUFA consumption, particularly
when tocopherol intake is low. The
resulting acceptable range for total PUFA
(n-6 and n-3 fatty acids) is between six
and 11%E. Therefore, over consumption of
PUFA is detrimental to health. The PUFA
rich soft oils such as soybean oil, corn oil
Palm oil has a balance
fatty acids, almost 50:50
saturated fatty acids to
unsaturated fatty acid.
When consumed, palm
oil behaves more like
monounsaturated fatty
acid inside the human
body.
After Covid-19 settles down, the government has to
seriously go to Africa, Latin America and the Middle East
to convince them on how good our palm oil is.
and canola oil are more prone to oxidation
and pro-inflammatory effects compared to
palm oil.
Palm oil has a balance fatty acids, almost
50:50 saturated fatty acids to unsaturated
fatty acid. When consumed, palm oil
behaves more like monounsaturated fatty
acid inside the human body.
Recently, several meta-analyses of
randomised trials and prospective cohort
studies and ecological studies, largely done
in European and North American countries,
showed either no association or a lower risk
between saturated fatty acid consumption
with total mortality and cardiovascular
disease events.
It is very important to look at the
latest scientific evidence on the effect of
saturated fatty acids and palm oil and their
impact on health. The old believe that palm
oil is bad for health is no longer valid.
Looking at the benefits of palm oil, what
are the other palm-based innovations
besides food products?
You can make a lot of products from palm
oil. The first thing that comes to our mind
would be food. For the food itself, it is not
limited to cooking oil. We are talking about
margarine, baking pastries, lassie drink
and even cheese. We also have non-food,
and this includes animal feeds: from
empty fruit bunches (EFB), palm fatty acid
distillate (PFAD) and even oil palm frond
(OPF). One popular product of palm oil will
be bio-diesel. We converted the palm oil
into methyl esters which are precisely like
diesel since the 1980s.
Eventually, we are trying to use more
for biodiesel. Besides biodiesel, we can
also produce bio-mass products. After
harvesting the oil, it can be made into
plywood, medium-density fibreboard,
cellulose, pulp, paper and packaging.
Other products include toilet soaps,
cosmetic ingredients, lipsticks, lubricants
and household cleaning products. These
products are a lot better in terms of value.
One of the essential products that we
developed was methyl ester sulphonate
(MES). This is used in making detergent. The
good thing is when you replace petroleumbased
detergent with our MES; you are
making it more environmental-friendly.
You seem quite focussed on markets
in the United States, the EU, China and
India. Aren’t the markets in Africa, for
instance, a potential gold mine? Or even
Japan or South America?
Last year somewhere in September and
October, we had a mission with the former
minister. We went to Kenya, Tanzania and
Ethiopia, which are vast markets. They are
very keen to work with our country. After
Covid-19 settles down, the government has
to seriously go to Africa, Latin America and
the Middle East to convince them on how
good our palm oil is. — The Health