This book serves as a practical guide to describe physical bunch and oil analysis of oil palms. It covers various topics on bunch and oil analysis, health and safety considerations, bunch sampling, physical bunch analysis of stalks, spikelets, fruits and nuts, fruit sampling, nut analysis and...

A brief history of bunch analysis of the oil palm crop is provided. This includes bunch components (stalk, spikelets, fruits, mesocarp, nuts, shell and kernels) and oil yield analysis. These parameters are used by oil palm breeders to analyse the oil yield potentials (e.g. quantity and quality...

Fresh fruit bunches harvested from the field should be transferred to the physical analysis laboratory as soon as possible to determine: bunch sample weight; the fruit type (Dura, Tenera and Pisifera); stalk weight; total number of spikelets in the bunch; percentage of fertile fruits in the bunch...

Nut analysis provides data on: percentage of shell in the fruit (S/F); shell to kernel (S/K); percentage of kernel in the fruit (K/F); kernel weight (KW); nut weight (NW); kernel to nut (K/N); and percentage of kernel in the bunch (K/B). Nuts should be oven dried at 60-105°C for seven to nine...

The Anacardiaceae includes many fruit-producing genera including Spondias (S. mombin, the hog plum, S. dulcis, the ambarella, S. purpurea, the red mombin, and others), Mangifera (M. indica, the mango, and several other species), Pistacia (P. vera, the pistachio nut, and ornamental trees) and ...

This chapter discusses important correlations between obesity and inflammation, highlighting the impact of physical activity, dietary modification, and weight loss in modulating the chronic inflammatory state seen in obese individuals. Dietary components of significance in diet-induced weight loss...

This chapter highlights important differences between food allergies and food intolerance, describing briefly various common food allergies, as well as cow's milk intolerance and phenylketonuria.

The aim of this chapter is to review the present status of indigenous fruit and nut species exploited in Vanuatu, Melanesia, and to discuss the stages of domestication, improvement, future breeding prospects and commercial development.

The objectives of this chapter are: (i) to provide a global synthesis of knowledge on indigenous fruit tree domestication, utilization and marketing experiences from tropical Africa, Latin America and Asia; (ii) to summarize and highlight the main opportunities, achievements and challenges that...

Sound strategies for the meaningful evaluation of mycotoxin contamination should include: (i) identification of the sites (where) and time (when) that lots are to be sampled, and (ii) a protocol to ensure that the test sample is representative of the lot from which it was taken. In this chapter we...