Overview

POPSIG-MPOC Palm Oil Educational Roadshow @ UKM 2023 was organised by UKM-Chemical Engineering Student Society (CheSC). The event was co-organised by Palm Oil Processing Special Interest Group (POPSIG), in conjunction with Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC).

Learning outcomes

• Explained the roles of chemical engineer in the palm oil industry to the pre-university students.
• Understood the contributions of palm oil industry to the UN SDGs.
• Recognised the roles of chemical engineer in addressing SDG3, SDG7, SDG8, SDG12, SDG13.
• Understood the application of life cycle analysis, circular economy, wildlife management and social impacts in sustainable palm oil industry.
• Developed the leadership skills among the pre-university students.
• Understood sustainable palm oil processing in industry.

Opening speech

Yang Berbahagia Professor Ir Dr Chong Mei Fong, Chair of POPSIG
YBhg Professor Chong praised the hard work by the organisers and the committee for organising POPSIG-MPOC Palm Oil Educational Roadshow at UKM 2023. The highly esteemed leader shared that the programme aimed to link the student community with the real-world industry, through technical talks, site tour and forum. The programme also provided a platform for the youth community to understand the needs of the industry through technical sharing.

Yang Berusaha Professor Ir Dr Mohd Syuhaimi Ab Rahman, Dean of Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
YBrs Professor Syuhaimi expressed his greatest appreciation to YBhg Academician Tan Sri Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Augustine S H Ong on attending the POPSIG-MPOC Palm Oil Educational Roadshow. He also expressed his gratitude to the event organisers at UKM, POPSIG and MPOC for making this event a great success. He added that the faculty welcomed the platform to exchange thoughts with the industrial experts.

Plenary paper

Yang Berbahagia Academician Tan Sri Emeritus Professor Datuk Dr Augustine S H Ong shared about the beauty of palm oil and made comparison against other edible oils. He informed that the position of fatty acid in the fat molecule significant in nutrition. The presence of saturated palmitic acid in human milk fat important for babies. Tan Sri Ong shared the tocotrienols delay cellular aging.

Tocotrienols acts as a super Vitamin E in the 21st century, and is more potent by 40-fold increase. Nano-tocotrienols are the food grade raw materials and show higher stability compared to nanoemulsion.

Keynote papers

Futureproofing palm oil industry

The Director of Biology and Sustainability Research Division at Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB), Dr Meilina Ong-Abdullah shared that feeding 9.2 billion people in 2050 requires 70% increase in food production.

Several policies were rolled out to address sustainable oil palm cultivation. It aims to cap total oil palm cultivated area to 6.5 hectares, ban the conversion of forest reserve areas for oil palm cultivation, and make available oil palm plantation maps for public access.

Dr Meilina shared about using nature-based solutions (NBS) to address challenges, and in this case, yield gaps to enhance the resiliency, sustainability and productivity of the farming system. Evolving conventional agriculture will drive us towards regenerative agriculture.

Several strategies in closing yield gaps were introduced, including:

• leverage rich oil palm genetic resource for crop improvement
• adoption of genome / post-genomic technologies into breeding processes
• employ new breeding technologies, eg: gene editing
• explore epigenetic
• precision agriculture
• mechanisation / automation in agriculture

Plantation 4.0

Senior Vice President I and Chief Research and Development Officer of Sime Darby Plantation Berhad, Dr Harikrishna Kulaveerasingam presented the oil palm industry from 2023 to 2030 and beyond. He shared about the use of statistics, machine learning and algorithms to conduct genome-wide association study. The company was accelerating traits needed for the future need, for example, to overcome climate change and diseases.

Dr Harikrishna also shared about the importance of realised yield. Using drone and satellite imagery technologies, the operators can know the palm health to deploy fertiliser or remediation. He shared about the Infinity Project: accelerate and leap, to reduce the number of labour per unit area of land.

Dr Harikrishna said that the integration of digital and robotics will define the new way of working for oil palm operations. Palm digital is a modular platform that brings together all current and future upstream digital services into a unified platform. Automation and robotics improves productivity and efficiency.

Dr Harikrishna concluded that innovation is the key in reinventing plantation. This includes leveraging on data, improving productivity, improving planting materials and revolutionising work practices.

Food safety

Senior Executive at Malaysian Palm Oil Council, Ms Areej Taufik presented that palm oil and all other edible oils contain some amount of saturated fats. Oils with high polyunsaturated fat content are not suitable for high heat cooking.

Teh Tarik session

Professor DDr Lam Hon Loong from the University of Nottingham Malaysia joined the panel to share the opinions and suggestions to the students. During the student-panel exchange, five participants involved in the panel discussion.

The following topics were raised by the participants:

• Commercialisation of the innovations in the industry.
• Waste management and biomass.
• Emission reduction, talent management, role model of the industry.
• Sustainability standard in the EU and investment from developed countries in palm oil industry.
• Potential challenges to Malaysian market when non-palm oil-producing countries are developing to produce palm oil.
• How the involvement of foreign labour is related to sustainability in the palm oil industry.
• Nutritious value of the palm oil and food safety.

Prizes

Congratulations to the winners of the Kahoot challenge and forum engagement prizes. The report will be published in POPSIG Newsletter Issue 26 (2023).

Acknowledgement

POPSIG gratefully acknowledges the support provided by Malaysian Palm Oil Council (MPOC) to POPSIG-MPOC Palm Oil Educational Roadshow. POPSIG has collaborated with MPOC on Palm Oil Educational Roadshow since 2019. MPOC is a corporate body with a mission to promote the market expansion of Malaysian palm oil and its product by enhancing the image of palm oil and creating better acceptance through awareness of various technological and economic advantages (techno-economic advantages) and environmental sustainability.