Oil palm fruit of the dura variety (left) and the tenera variety (right)MALAYSIAN PALM OIL BOARD
Species: African oil palm, Elaeis guineensis
Genome size: 1.8 billion base pairs
Palm oil, used in goods ranging from potato chips to bath products, accounts for 45 percent of the world’s edible oil production. Now a team led by researchers from the Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) has sequenced the genome of the African oil palm and has identified a gene responsible for volume of oil production, called SHELL.
“Mutations in [SHELL] explain the single most important economic trait of the oil palm: how the thickness of its shell correlates to fruit size and oil yield,” Rajinder Singh of the MPOB said in a press release.
The African oil palm has three varieties: dura, pisifera, and a hybrid of the two called tenera. Dura has ...
