INTRODUCTION
The oil palm industry is an important
agricultural activity that contributes
significantly to the GNP of Malaysia. In fact,
Malaysia is the world’s largest producer of
palm oil with more than 5 million ha of land
under oil palm. With such an area under
cultivation of oil palm, the amount of biomass
produced not only at the plantation level but
also at the processing mills, is tremendous. It is
estimated that 50 – 70 tonnes of biomass is
produced annually from one hectare of
plantation. Malaysia has about 4.5 million ha
of oil palm and the calculated amount of
biomass produced can reach 225 million tonnes
per annum. The by-products from milling of
palm fruits and extraction of include palm
kernel cake, palm pressed fibre, palm oil mill
effluent, empty fruit bunches, and decanter
cake. In the early days, these by-products were
discarded and pose a pollution problem to the
environment. The proximate composition of
these by-products is shown in Table 1. Among
the by-products produced by the oil palm
industry, palm kernel cake (PKC) is considered
an important feed ingredient in ruminant
feeding. Malaysia produces more than 3
million tonnes of PKC much of which are
exported to Europe and many other countries.