BY JAYASYALINY JAYARAJ
KUALA LUMPUR: What has traditionally been ignored in the palm oil milling stream, has turned out to become a blockbuster bioactive supplement – now rolling out from a manufacturing plant in Mexico.
The supplement, Palm Fruit Bioactive Complex (PFBc) has now [ihc-hide-content ihc_mb_type=”show” ihc_mb_who=”2,3,5″ ihc_mb_template=”1″ ]
“come to be” because Malaysian scientists had the intuition to see beyond the ordinary and ask “why not?”
Former Malaysian Palm Oil Board (MPOB) Director of the Advanced Biotechnology and Breeding Centre, Dr Ravigadevi Sambanthamurthi who pioneered the idea of turning around the aqueous stream – that comes with every mill processing of palm oil fruits, says she and co-researchers looked beyond the core essence of the palm fruit, which is its oil and oil- soluble components.
Speaking to The Petri Dish in an interview recently, she hinted that the idea of looking deeper into the phenolic compounds in the aqueous stream of palm oil milling was more of a scientific intuition than a bolt from the blue. It was a hunch, an inkling perhaps that eventually led to the “eureka” moment.
Ravigadevi shared her idea of looking into the aqueous stream with two of her colleagues, Dr Kalyana Sundram and Dr Tan Yew Ai who were also members of the MPOB research team which led to the birth of an innovative extraction technology and high value downstream product.
“We must remember that the oil palm is also a fruit, and a colourful fruit at that. Colourful fruits like berries are rich in watersoluble polyphenols. Most of us are usually fixated on the main ingredient of the fruit, in this case the oil. But we diverted our attention to the water-soluble components of the palm fruit which were entering the aqueous stream during palm oil milling. As they say, the devil is in the detail, Ravigadevi and team discovered a treasure trove of beneficial biological goodness in the aqueous stream.
The discovery began in the late 90’s in MPOB when her team conducted preliminary analysis on the aqueous stream. Her team was the first to report on the discovery of the unique, water-soluble polyphenols in the palm oil milling aqueous stream. They developed a process for extracting the phenolics. A pilot plant was built by MPOB to provide extracts for research and precommercialisation tests and resulted in 28 patents and numerous peer reviewed publications.
Recognizing that research does not stand alone, MPOB forged strategic linkages with many national and international centres of excellence including University of Malaya, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Harvard, Brandeis University and Wayne State University in USA and CSIRO in Australia.
Studies by MPOB and its strategic partners proved that the oil palm phenolics have potent multiple biological activities including antioxidant, anti-diabetic, antihypertensive, anti-inflammatory, anti-cancer and anti-atherogenic properties. Hence, oil palm phenolics have wide applications and potential in the health and wellness sector.
“My then PhD student Leow Soon Sen conducted a very interesting experiment by subjecting mice to the Morris water maze test. One set of mice was fed a normal diet and water while the other was fed a normal diet and oil palm phenolics as drinking fluid. We found that the latter swam a shorter distance and reached the endpoint faster but with the same velocity,” said Ravigadevi.
“The mice fed with the phenolics figured out a faster path to swim towards the endpoint, taking shortcuts. This showed the cognitive enhancing property of the oil palm phenolics,” she added.
The home-grown technology won the prestigious Tech Museum Award under the Nations Millennium Project for Technologies Benefiting Mankind and was cited for its positive environmental impact which transformed the aqueous stream into a useful and profitable product. No other Malaysian team has won this award.
The technology also grabbed many other national and international awards. The technology was launched by Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Muhammad in November 2019 and is licensed to a Malaysian company, Phenolaeis Sdn Bhd. The company entered into a formal agreement with two Mexican investor-partners in December 2017. The production plant is operating in Palenque, Chiapas in Mexico.
The first batch of commercial products trademarked Palm Fruit Bioactive ComplexTM entered the market as a bulk ingredient in the United States in June 2019 and is now available for worldwide distribution.
Ravigadevi says the successful breakthrough and subsequent advancement in this research was made possible by MPOB’s excellent research ecosystem, especially the freedom to explore basic research and full support from top management including current Director General Dr Ahmad Parveez. [/ihc-hide-content]
