It has been recognized for several decades that the uncritical message
that coconut oil boosts harmful cholesterol creating an increased heart risk
is not true. The soy industry worked very hard to discredit coconut oil after
the second world war when imports to the US resumed following liberation of
the Philippines. The wartime boost to demand for edible oils in the US had
given the soy industry a huge lift and the producers and marketers were keen
not to concede the market back to the pre-war preferred coconut shortening
and cooking oil. The trials that showed cholesterol to rise in laboratory
animals on sole coconut as the fat component in the diet, compared with steady
cholesterol when soy was the sole dietary oil, gave that bad result for coconut
as coconut lacks the essential fats, ω-6 fatty acids (omega-6 fatty acids)
and ω-3 fatty acids (n-3 fatty acids). The animals were suffering from that
deficiency and their cholesterol was high. The soy industry seized upon those
results and re-educated a whole generation of health professionals and dieticians
about dietary fats like "saturated is bad for your heart and polyunsaturated
is good for your heart". There
are many references on the internet that deal with this story.
In reality the saturated fats in coconut oil boost HDL as much as they boost
LDL so that there is a non-harmful balance maintained. Coconut is definitely
not a heart risk in a balanced diet. In the Pacific islands large scale
commercial plantations are in decline but smallholder production continues
because coconuts are important for consumption, cash crops and shade for
intercrops in subsistence agriculture. Green coconut water is an important
source of fluids and mineral salts for people living on coral atolls and
its isotonic properties make it useful for diarrhoea, cholera and other causes
of dehydration. Coconut flesh supplements fish in remote communities. As
a cash crop, coconuts may be sold locally, processed at village level to
make coconut oil, meal and coconut cream but the main cash crop is copra
sold to traders and processors. Prices of coconut products are not stable
in the world market and
cyclones may destroy crops,
so coconut farmers need intercrops for income security. In the Pacific islands
a big proportion of coconuts may not be picked up for harvest when prices
are low because of the cost of labour from outside the family. Average figures
for a smallholding of 0.5 hectares in Papua New Guinea have been estimated
as a nut yield of 3000 kg / hectare, an average weight of 1.5 kg per nut, a copra yield
of 0.24 kg / nut, and copra yield of 480 kg / hectare and total dried copra production
of 240
kg. The smallholder has to pay for labour to collect nuts off the ground
or harvest from tree, labour for dehusking, drying the endosperm and transport
of copra to a trader. When the international copra price is low copra production
is attractive only where alternative employment opportunities are limited.
In many countries, a high percentage of coconut palms are senile with declining
production. Smallholders may be content to allow self-seeding to maintain
stands of trees of different ages instead of replacing palms with high yielding
varieties to avoid a declining productivity which may not even be noticed.
Where there is insecure land tenure or customary tenure, smallholders may
not want to risk cash investment to improve yields. Where governments have
been involved in the marketing, finance, regulation, research and advice
of the coconut industry run by smallholders, the fees for such services have
acted as a tax on smallholders and limited the use of new technologies to
increase production.
22.0 The coconut palm - voyager,
nourisher and beautifier of the tropical world, Mike Foale, University of
Queensland
Origin
On the geographical fringe of the great palm gene pool of Gondwanaland
the coconut claimed for itself an exclusive niche among palms along the
coastal edge of plant ecosystems - that is to say, the strand. The Pandanus
tree of the strand is not a palm, being a member of the monocotyledon Pandanaceae
Family. Freed from the constraint of competing at close quarters with most
other species great and small by developing a sea-going seed, the coconut
spread to strands all around the Tethys sea. This vast stretch
of warm water
was located between huge but disintegrating components of Gondwanaland - Antarctica
and Australasia to the south, the African continent to the west, the Cretaceous
land mass of Asia to the north, while being wide open eastwards to the Pacific,
with its westward warm water flows. It seems likely that the Tethys sea was,
for many millions of years, a warm environment, in which many species that
we now associate with the zone flanking the equator, evolved and adapted
to a tropical environment. The coconut spread far and wide by floating between diverse fragments of
land, among them Madagascar, Mauritius, southern India and Sri Lanka. It would
eventually reach by natural dispersal the coasts of southeast Asia, the islands
of present day Indonesia, southern Philippines, Hainan, New Guinea, Melanesia,
and even Australia, Micronesia, and some Polynesian atolls and high islands.
Domestication
Many millions of years would have elapsed until human groups migrated eastwards
along the southern coasts of Asia, taking advantage of the presence of easily
accessible and nourishing food and drinking water supplied from the coconut
to support settlement and further migration. Settlers practised selection
for palm and fruit traits which better suited their domestic and seagoing
needs. Whereas the truly wild palm produced a fruit enclosing a small nut
(of diameter about 100 mm) encased in a thick "'life-jacket" to maximize flotation
and survival while "voyaging", a fruit enclosing a larger nut was favoured
as a more convenient source of food and water. This delivered a greater amount
of edible kernel, more easily scraped out, and there was less biomass invested
in the husk and shell than in the wild fruit. A further advantage was that
large fruit, harvested at the tender nut or drinking stage, contained a much
more generous quantity of water - a great drink supply for voyaging traders
and explorers. A nut only 20% larger in diameter than the wild type contains
almost double the volume of water at the "drinking" stage of maturity, while
encased in a thinner husk.
From about 4000 years BP the ancestral Polynesian settlers, extending their
domain from south-east Asia eastwards, made great use of the coconut "water
bottle" while travelling on their splendid double-hulled canoes (in which
the planks are secured together with coconut fibre) to discover the many habitable
islands of the south Pacific, and Hawaii. It seems very likely that almost
everywhere, on arrival, they found the wild coconut on the strand which provided
a nourishing welcome, particularly on atolls but also on the sandy beaches
of high islands. Mature fruit germinating on board their vessels would have
been available to plant at any new settlement. The presence of large-fruited
palm populations on many Polynesian homelands in the Pacific, including Samoa,
Tonga, Rotuma, Rennell and Sikaiana confirms this. The dominance of thick-husked
types on most atolls suggests that their colonizers generally did not have
large thin-husked nuts on arrival, allowing the wild type to remain dominant.
The Australian coconut story
The history of the coconut in Australia is less clear and has become the
subject of dispute between those who claim that it cannot be considered a
native plant here and those who point to a small number of historical records
of its presence before foreign settlement in the 19th century. McGillivray
reported two clumps of palms observed in 1848 close together on Russell Island
in the Frankland group south of Cairns in north Queensland, and Thozet described
an isolated ancient palm sighted in the 1850s at Emu Park (near Yepoon) where
there is a landmark named "Coconut Point” to acknowledge that discovery. It
is clear that viable coconut seeds do come ashore naturally on the coast
of north Queensland in particular, as local aboriginal languages include
specific words for the edible fruit found on the beach. Avid collection of
such fruit and even of sprouted nuts to extract the kernel treat found therein,
and also the destruction of drifted fruit by the foraging native white-tailed
rat, are likely reasons why the coconut was naturally present
n so few places
when the new settlers arrived. It is highly probable that there were coconut
palms on the Queensland coast when the aborigines first arrived (around 50
000 years BP). The shoreline during that period of low sea level (peaking
at 150 metres below its present level around 20 000 years BP due to the most
recent ice age), would have been far to seaward from its present position.
When the sea level rose during the melting of the Northern hemisphere ice
over the millennia following the peak of the ice age, older palms on the shore
would have gradually been overtaken. Meanwhile their seed would have been
thrown "forward" to establish new palms on the strand as it slowly "retreated"
before the ever-rising tide.
Life story
The growth of the coconut seedling is supported by the energy reserve in
the kernel, lasting for up to 15 months. In nature this would have greatly
increased the probability that the germinating seedling growing on a deep
sandy strand could survive the delay until its roots reached the water table
or adequate stored water in the deep heavy-textured soil profile. The water
present in the coconut seed stimulates germination once the husk adjacent
to the germ pore is leached free of salt water. The haustorium then expands
into the cavity, gradually absorbing the rich nutrient and energy supply provided
by the kernel, translocating it to the seedling. This prolonged "alternative"
supply of biomass to support growth has led to another "career" for the coconut
seedling, as a successful indoor plant. It can thrive for up to two years
in a temperature above 21
oC at any latitude while the leaves achieve limited
photosynthesis. Some leaf
exposure to sunlight penetrating indoors could
further extend the ornamental life of the seedling. Apart from its unique large fruit (exceeded only by the fruit of
Laodicea
maldivica, Coco-de-Mer) the coconut shares key botanical traits with many
other palms: steady production of non-thorny fronds, and inflorescences, when
temperature is not seasonal; monoecious habit with large female and small
male flowers on every palm; clean shedding of the frond after about two years
except in very dry environments. Palms such as coconut, lacking the ability
to generate suckers, are destined to perish within about 100 years from germination,
as their inexorable height increase is combined, beyond 60 years, with narrowing
and weakening of the upper trunk, known as "pencil pointing". The coconut species (
Cocos nucifera L) has three clearly distinguished
sub-types, being the Tall, the fragile Dwarf and the robust Dwarf. The latter
is not widely dispersed and might well have been the product of prolonged
natural or human-assisted selection in cyclone-prone regions. A short sturdy
palm, out-crossing and more conveniently harvested by climbing, it is found
almost exclusively in Polynesia and Fiji and might well have been among the
genotypes "planted-on-arrival” on new shores, or traded during
the many exchange
visits that took place in Polynesia.
The more common fragile dwarf also has a reduced rate of height increase,
but this is combined with a narrower trunk. Not common in cyclone-prone regions,
this dwarf frequently displays the genetically recessive orange and yellow
fruit colours (some have the non-recessive green colour) because it is predominantly
self-pollinating. The small fruit, borne in large number, is a very convenient
source of drink in the home and village, as harvest is relatively easy, at
least for 25 years, and the water content is modest. The tall type of coconut
exhibits a very rapid rate of trunk extension (as high as 1.5 m/yr) from
age four years until 10 years or so, at which time an increasing proportion
of new biomass is diverted from trunk extension to supply rising fruit production.
Cross-pollination is the rule for tall-type palms, resulting in obvious heterozygosity
in fruit size, shape and colour (mostly shades of green and brown) compared
to the inbreeding dwarf, but generally there is little variation in trunk
and crown characters within tall populations.
Many products and uses
Coastal communities consume coconut water and milk extracted from the kernel
on a daily basis, as do most rural peoples of the humid tropical lowlands.
Mature and tender nuts are traded extensively into nearby highland and urban
regions. Coconut milk, pressed daily from shredded kernel, is a routine ingredient
in traditional cuisine. Heating coconut milk to evaporate the water provides
an oil of attractive flavour for domestic use, as well as for local use in
skin lotions and shampoos. It is this oil which got the attention of European
traders and subsequently entered international trade in the mid-19th century
as dried kernel (copra) which comprises about two thirds oil by weight.
The sap tapped from the bound-up inflorescence is valued highly in many
traditional cultures, especially Sri Lanka, parts of Indonesia and Philippines
and Micronesia. It provides a vitamin-rich beverage when fresh, an alcoholic
drink after fermentation, and a source of palm sugar when evaporated.
Rapidly growing demand for oil to supplement the supply of animal fats
including tallow and whale oil resulted in widespread investment in coconut
plantations producing copra. This is the kiln- or sun dried kernel which
was stored and then transported to developed countries.. particularly in
Europe and north America. Coconut oil enjoyed a period of several decades
as the dominant traded vegetable oil, but high price due to increasing demand
and disrupted trade during the mid-20th century, brought about a rapid
rise
in production of many other oils - notably soy, palm oil, and canola. Inevitably
the price fell, and a combination of low yield and a high cost of production
rendered most coconut plantations unprofitable by the 1980s. In some regions
the plantations reverted to indigenous ownership with copra production ongoing,
while in others oil palm, replaced coconut, often with a core plantation
and satellite oil palm farms for smallholders.
The oil palm, as a plantation crop, was developed to a much higher level
of productivity than coconut and retains attractive profitability which is
supporting continuing expansion, especially in Indonesia and Malaysia. Even
so, the coconut retains a vital role and high status in small communities
throughout the tropics as a life-supporting resource and also as a means to
generate a modest income-on-demand for the small-holder farmers.
Productivity for the oil market
The productivity of the coconut in a plantation environment is constrained
by its basic anatomy and physiology which evolved to ensure its survival and
fruitfulness on strand environments combined with a capacity to disseminate
seeds to new locations via the ocean. The wild-type coconut invests its energy
in a prolific root system capable of a strong grip while exploring the soil
widely and deeply, a dense but remarkably flexible trunk to help orient the
resilient crown to reduce the pressure of potentially destructive wind. The
fronds have a very robust rachis (stem) to cope with wind assault, while also
being designed [by nature] to separate from the trunk under extreme wind
stress. Perhaps the coconut palm could be described as a first class choice
for second class environmental conditions? It copes with highly alkaline sandy
soil, proximity to the sea, alternating seasonal drought and high rainfall,
fluctuating humidity, high light intensity, and the assault of cyclonic wind.
It is not surprising that small-holders are very attached
to the palm for
their survival. In a plantation configuration a single coconut palm develops only three-quarters
of the active leaf area of
an oil palm, while the latter is far better equipped,
by its evolution in the rainforests of West Africa, to achieve sustained productivity
while crowded together. Hybrid coconuts yield much more than others but still
are not competitive with the productivity of the oil palm. The coconut achieves
25% less light interception and 25% less biomass production, of which 8-10%
of new biomass comprises oil, compared with 18% for the oil palm, implying
that for oil yield alone the oil palm's potential is more than double that
of the coconut. This weak position of coconut productivity is mitigated
somewhat by the higher value of its by-products, comprising kernel residue,
shell, peat and fibre. Coconut water is an alternative product mostly extracted
from the immature fruit, which has little by-product value except as raw
mulch, but strong demand has resulted in profitable ventures in coconut water
production, particularly in India and Brazil.
A palm with charisma
The coconut is a favourite outdoor ornamental in many tropical locations,
increasing the visual amenity of streetscapes and beach-side resorts. It has
come to symbolize the relaxed and indulgent life-style that many visitors
from cooler and more crowded places are seeking for their holiday. Unfortunately
a misguided assessment of the risk that failing fruit might pose to the passers-by
in these places has led to zealous pruning of fruit from the palms, at the
behest of insurance providers in north Queensland for example. Whereas simple
guard barriers and clear signage indicating possible areas of risk should
suffice, resort managers and local authorities have bowed to the demand
for "zero risk" resulting in palms being twice-yearly denuded of fruit. This
fruit loss leads to development of a crown comprising widely-spaced up-swept fronds which together
resemble more a giant feather duster than the lovely spherical crown of a
productive palm.
Resilience and adaptability
The relative isolation
of the coconut from competing plants and marauding microfauna and microflora
in its evolutionary incubator on the strands of the Tethys sea has resulted
in a plant which suffers much from the attacks of many insects, fungi and
other micro-organisms when intensively managed. The coconut has very few
"obligate enemies", meaning life forms that are specific to itself. On the
other hand some pests, including the rhinoceros beetle, palm weevil, locusts,
leaf miners, sucking and scale insects find the coconut very attractive among
the many species that they are capable of attacking. There are some examples,
however, where the coconut has developed tolerance to a particular hostile
organism, indicating a prolonged association of the palm and the organism.
A case in point is the Foliar Decay virus of coconut which is unique to
some islands in Vanuatu. The local coconut populations showed
no symptoms of harm and indeed the presence of the virus was only detected
in the 1980s, when the virus attacked all introduced varieties of coconut,
causing death. The virus was identified and described by an Australian research
group from Adelaide.
A most nutritious dietary component
The most contentious aspect of recent coconut history is its misguided
demonization by competing vegetable oil marketers depicting it as an unhealthy
food risking heart disease. Laboratory animals fed a diet in which the sole
fat was hydrogenated coconut oil became unhealthy, in contrast to others
on a sole soy fat diet. The saturated fat hypothesis, "that such fats raise
serum cholesterol, which in turn gives rise to heart disease" was being developed
at the time of that trial and this result fitted expectation. With aggressive
advertising marketers of unsaturated fats, especially soy, were able to take
over the market share of coconut (and many animal fats as well) in USA and
further afield. That campaign continues to this day in spite of indisputable
evidence that millions of inhabitants of tropical coastal places have enjoyed
life free from heart disease on a diet that has included a high proportion
of coconut oil. The
difference of their diet from the coconut diet in the original trial is that
the traditional diet includes fish, rich in ω-3 oil, a component not found
in coconut oil but present in soy oil. The realization of the essential role
of ω-3 fatty acids and also ω-6 (present only in minute concentration in
coconut) fatty acids has presented a feasible explanation for the good health
of coconut users on a varied fat diet. Nevertheless the perception persists
among many health professionals and consumers that coconut oil should be
avoided. This is most unfortunate as the unique medium-chain (small molecule)
fatty acids of coconut oil can make a remarkable contribution to good health.
There is evidence from rigorous laboratory studies that these fatty acids
boost body energy in Type 2 diabetes sufferers, and innumerable case studies
support the value of coconut oil.
In summary the coconut stands out among palms, and indeed among plants
generally, as a most attractive contributor to visual amenity of a landscape
and a most valuable food source. To that could be added all the other products
and uses made of practically every one of its anatomical parts. This places
the coconut as an outstanding member of the palm family and indeed a member
of the short list of plants which have contributed to human economy and culture
in both ornamental and life-supporting roles.
Further reading:
Dowe HL and Smith LT (2002) A brief history of the coconut palm in Australia.
Palms: 46(3) 134-138
Foale MA and Ashburner GR (2005) The Coconut Palm. In: Handbook of Industrial
Crops. The Howarth Press Inc. Binghampton New York pp 235-294
Foale, Mike (2003) The Coconut Odyssey - the bounteous possibilities of
the tree of life. ACIAR: Canberra. Available online as a pdf file from www.aciar.gov.au/publication/MN101
Foale, Mike and Harries, Hugh. (2008) Farm and Forestry Production and
Marketing profile for Coconut. Online at - http://agroforestry.net/scps/Coconut
speciality crop.pdf
Friend D and Corley R11V (2004) Measuring coconut palm dry matter production.
Exp. Agric. 30:223235
Harries K and Paull RE (2008) Cocos nucifera Coconut. pp 107-118 In: J
Janick & R E Paull (Eds) The Encyclopedia of Fruit and Nuts. Oxford University
Press, USA.
McGillivray (1852) Voyage of the Rattlesnake. London
Mohd. Basri Wahidl, Siti Nor Akmar Abdullah2 and 1. E. Henson (2004) Oil
Palm Achievements and Potential. Proceedings of the 4th International Crop
Science Congress, 26 Sep 1 Oct 2004, Brisbane, Australia. Published on CDROM.
Web site: www.cropscience.orp,.au
Thozet (1869) Journal of Botany
Turner N et all (2009) Enhancement of Muscle Mitochondrial Oxidative Capacity
and
Alterations in Insulin Action Are Lipid Species Dependent: Potent Tissue-Specific
Effects of Medium-Chain Fatty Acids. Diabetes November 2009 58:2547-2554