Crops coconut

The tropical oil crops, coconut and palm, are the most efficient oil-producing crops, with coconut plantations yielding up to 2 tonnes per hectare of oil and the best performing palm plantations from 5-6 tonnes per hectare. By comparison, oil yields of temperate oil crops are typically of the order of 1-2 tonnes per hectare for the best oil-yielding crops (oilseed rape and sunflower). Clearly, Table 2.1 represents only a small fraction of oil-bearing plant species. Many other seed, fruit and nut oils are extracted for food use, however unless they contain fatty acid profiles or fatty acid derivatives of specific industrial interest, total oil-yield, fatty acid yield and cost of the final oil product tends to limit their use in industrial applications on all but a small or localised scale. 

Cash crops coconut, grapefruits, cocoa, honey ... 

In some areas of the tropics, the palm grows with a minimum of attention through a lifespan of more than 50 years. Its fruit, the coconut, has been referred anticlimactically as the lazy man s crop coconuts produced throughout the year drop to the ground when mature, there to be collected at leisure. Commercial farms, however, are tended and developed to maintain and improve productivity. 

The oil crops have been cultivated since antiquity. Rapeseed was described in the Indian Sanskrit writings of 2000 Bc and sesame seed was already known in ancient times. For the past half century, the cultivation of oil-bearing plants has increased considerably. There are several species of plants in the world whose oil can be utiUzed for human consumption. Although Lennarts (1983) described forty different oilseeds, there are only ten edible oil crops of commercial value in the world market. Seven of these are seed crops (cottonseed, groundnuts, rapeseed, safflower seed, sesame seed, soybeans and sunflower seed), and three are tree crops (coconut, olives and oil palm/kemels). Cultivation of several of these crops (coconut with copra, and oil palm/palm kernels) is limited almost exclusively to developing countries, where the most favourable climatic and soil conditions are available. However, some are annual crops and some are perennial (tree) crops, and these have very different possibilities of responding to changes in the world market. 

Coconut. In 1988, total coconut production was 36,802,000 t, of which 81% was produced in Asia, mainly in Indonesia and the Philippines (157). The coconut is essentiaUy a crop of the lowland tropics (157). On the average, five nuts are required to produce 1 kg of copra, the dried endosperm of the nut. Copra is further processed to obtain coconut oil and copra meal. To produce coconut milk, which is an emulsion of coconut oil and water, grated fresh coconut meat is mixed with hot water and pressed (157). Either poles having an attached sickle-shaped knife or monkeys (158) may be used for harvesting. 

Koppelung,/. coupling linkage. Koppelwirtschaft, /. rotation of crops. Kopra-bl, -fett, n. coconut oil. 

Dioxin (2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin TCDD) is among the most toxic compounds known today. It is an airborne contaminant from an incineration process, which has been described in Section 3.3.2. Dioxin also frequently occurs as an impurity in the herbicide 2,4,5-T. Accordingly, when the herbicide 2,4,5-T is applied to crops, dioxin is also released to the soil. Any spills of dioxin also cause soil contamination. It may be removed by extraction with coconut-activated carbon. Its half-life in soil is about one year. 

Fats and oils are triesters of the trivalent alcohol glycerol and three (different) even-numbered aliphatic carboxylic acids, the fatty acids. Fats and oils differ in the length and the number of unsaturated bonds in the carbon chain. The shorter Cio-Ci4-fatty acids are obtained from coconut oil and palm kernel oil. These fatty acids are mostly saturated, and they are used in the manufacture of detergents. Cig-fatty acids are more widely used. Oleic acid, a Cig-fatty acid with an unsaturated bond on the ninth carbon atom, can be produced from many crops. Specific varieties or genetically modified plants, such as rape, have a content of over 90% oleic acid [4]. 

Most commodity oils contain fatty acids with chain lengths between Cie and C22, with Cig fatty acids dominating in most plant oils. Palm kernel and coconut, sources of medium-chain fatty acids, are referred to as lauric oils. Animal fats have a wider range of chain length, and high erucic varieties of rape are rich in this C22 monoene acid. Potential new oil crops with unusual unsaturation or additional functionahty are under development. Compilations of the fatty acid composition of oils and fats (6, 9, 11, 12) and less-common fatty acids (13) are available. 

Some commodity oils and fats such as palm, palm kernel, coconut, and olive are tree crops. Once the trees mature, they continue to produce fruit for many years and production levels cannot be greatly changed from season to season. 

Laurie Oils There are two major lauric oils—coconut oil and palm-kernel oil. Both are tropical oils, and both are tree crops. They differ from all other commodity oils in their higher level of medium chain acids, especially lauric, and slightly from one another as shown in Table 2(b). They find limited use in food products and are used extensively in the production of surface-active compounds. For more information, see Sections 5.3 and 5.10. 

As previously mentioned, the triglycerides found in biomass are esters of the triol, glycerol, and fatty acids (Fig. 3.6). These water-insoluble, oil-soluble esters are common in many biomass species, especially the oilseed crops, but the concentrations are small compared to those of the polysaccharides and lignins. Many saturated fatty acids have been identified as constituents of the lipids. Surprisingly, almost all the fatty acids that have been found in natural lipids are straight-chain acids containing an even number of carbon atoms. Most lipids in biomass are esters of two or three fatty acids, the most common of which are lauric (Cn), myristic (Cu), palmitic (Cia), oleic (Cis), and linoleic (Cis) acids. Palmitic acid is of widest occurrence and is the major constituent (35 to 45%) of the fatty acids of palm oil. Lauric acid is the most abundant fatty acid of palm-kemel oil (52%), coconut oil (48%), and babassu nut oil (46%). The monounsaturated oleic acid and polyunsaturated linoleic acid comprise about 90% of sunflower oil fatty acids. Linoleic acid is the dominant fatty acid in com oil (55%), soybean oil (53%), and safflower oil (75%). Saturated fatty acids of 18 or more carbon atoms are widely distributed, but are usually present in biomass only in trace amounts, except in waxes. 

Tree crops. Palm, palmkemel, coconut and olive oils are obtained from trees that have to be planted and mature before they give a useful crop. Once this stage is reached, the trees continue to provide crops for 25-30 years, in the case of palm, and longer than that for olive. These crops cannot be changed on a yearly basis. 

In Southeast Asia, the worst affected country is Indonesia, with 2.2 million ha of salt affected soils (Dent et al, 1992). In Malaysia, about 0.23 million ha of saline marine soils are found in the Peninsular region and Sarawak (Aminuddin et al, 1994). Some of these soils have been reclaimed by construction of coastal bunds, check gates, and drains for production of crops like coconut, oil palm, cocoa, coffee and paddy. 

Robinson, W.L. and Stone, E.L. (1992). The effect of potassium on the uptake of Cs in food crops grown on coral soils Coconut at Bikini atoll. Health. Phys. 62,496-511. 

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