Use Of Coconuts

As Food, Oil, Fertiliser

CINCE Japan struck, and the great coconut-growing territories of Philip pines, Dutch East Indies, and Malaya passed under Axis control, the products of the coconut palm have attained a new value in the Anglo-American world.

Messrs. H. W. Jack and R. J. A. Lever, director and editor respectively of the Fijian “Agricultural Journal” —one of the best tropical agricultural journals in the world—recently have published some valuable and timely articles, describing how to make the best use of the coco nut. Extracts follow :— Coconut Recipes

Coconut Butter

Coconut butter is being very largely used in place- of dairy butter in the United Kingdom and France, and, before the war, it was largely used in Germany.

It can be used wherever dairy butter is used. Here is the process:—Grate or grind in a mill the meat of the nut as fine as it can be ground, and for the meat of each average nut add a pint of boiling water. Put this in a press, so that the milk can be squeezed out separate from the pulp. This milk can be used in place of cow’s milk, for any purpose, and is specially good with stewed fruit.

To make butter, this milk can be separated in a separator or let stand in a pan to let the cream rise, which it should do in about the same time as the cream in cow’s milk. This can be set to ripen and churned in the usual way. The whole process is in every respect the same as in making dairy butter. Wash out the buttermilk; add salt to taste. As a rule, this butter is white, and annatto colour

ing can be added. According to the size of the nuts, it should take from six to ten nuts to make 1 lb. of butter. The churning should be done in a cool tem perature, say, between 60 to 70 deg.

Coconut Rice

To the grated meat of one coconut add two cups of hot water; squeeze this in a strainer cloth and add sufficient water to make four cups of liquid; add four table spoons of sugar, a spoonful of ginger, and two cups of rice; cook in a double boiler for nearly one hour. Serve for dessert. (In Spanish America, ginger is almost always added to coconut dishes; it promotes digestion.)

Coconut And Tapioca Pudding

Mix one cup of “minute tapioca” with four tablespoons of grated coconut “meat,” the yolks of four eggs well beaten, one cup of white sugar and one litre of “natural" tinned or dairy milk. Bake for one-half hour and add meringue made of the whites of four eggs and three tablespoons of sugar.—“ New Guinea Agri cultural Gazette.”

Picking Versus Natural Fall in Coconut Harvesting In the main eastern copra producing areas, it has always been the custom to pick the ripe nuts from the palms at re gular intervals —six weeks being regarded as the ideal interval.

In view of the copra depression of the past decade, experimental data were col lected over a series of years which showed no significant difference between the numbers of nuts which fell naturally from the palms and the numbers of nuts which could be collected from palms growing under comparable conditions.

In yield of copra, however, the picking of the nuts from the palms resulted in an increase in the weight of copra per unit

area compared with nuts which had fallen naturally from palms growing under similar conditions.

Obviously, the decreased return in copra from nuts which had fallen naturally was due to the material percentage of ger mination which is always found in such nuts. In the experiments in question, it was found that of all the nuts which were allowed to fall naturally, 28 per cent, had already germinated.

This percentage was found where nut collections were made at regular monthly intervals—at longer intervals the per centage of germinations would certainly have been much higher. In the same experiment the nuts picked from the palms showed a negligible amount of germination, the proportion being less

than one per cent.-

H.W.J.

Copra Quality Now that the maximum output of copra is required as a war effort, attention should be given to the curing of the copra so as to secure the utmost quantity of high-arade produce. Low-grade copra means a definite and material loss to the producer. Each producer can prove this to his own satisfaction by collecting 2,000 nuts, dividing them equally and produc ing copra from each lot of 1,000 nuts separately. With one lot reasonable care should be taken to make good copra only; with the second lot indifferent copra should be made —irregular drying, ex posure to rain or dew, etc. It will be found that the weight of the copra made carefully from the one lot will materially outweigh the copra which was made care lessly—in fact, the loss in making poor copra may, in bad cases, amount to 25-30 per cent, or even more, after a period of one or two months have elapsed.

The initial material was the same in each case, so that the loss is entirely due to lack of attention to methods or pro

cedure in curing the copra. The loss due to making bad copra does not affect the merchant or the manufacturer —it affects only the producer. Hence each producer should strive to reduce his losses on manufacture as much as possible and thus secure the maximum remuneration for his produce. Much loss can be obviated with the exercise of a little more care and better supervision coupled with im provements to available drying equip ment.—H.W.J.

Conversion of Coconut Oil Into a Solid Crystalline Mass While engaged in the study of thermal decomposition of coconut oil. J, Banzon (“The Philippine Agriculturist”) observed that a particular catalyst unique property of converting coconut oil into a crystalline solid mass.

The process is the simple distillation of coconut oil with ferric oxide or finely divided iron. The distillate thus obtained is dark-yellowish with a bluish fluores cence. On cooling, it sets to a crystalline greenish-yellowish mass, which may be purified by repeated washings with methylated spirits.

The purified product is a light, white, crystalline powder, tasteless, and with a faint odour similar to stearic acid. It melts sharply at 55 deg. Cent., to a clear transparent, colourless liquid, and solidifies to a hard, rather brittle, crystalline solid. Owing to its close re semblance to paraffin, this solid may possibly be used interchangeably with the latter, as, for example, in candle-making.—

H.W.J.

Manufacture of Coconut Oil From Fresh Coconut Meat An interesting account of a process for extracting oil directly from fresh coconut meat without its conversion into copra is given in the Philippine “Coconut Journal” by Pedro E. Torres.

The author claims that oil extraction from copra suffers from several dis advantages of which the chief are;— (1) Despite utmost care in handling and storage, the oil produced always contains free fatty acids and is usually discoloured thereby requiring additional refining operations. (2) The only by-products are copra meal and cake which are dirty and be come rancid and can only be used for animal feeds.

He describes the necessary processes for direct oil extraction in chrono logical order and indicates types of equipment already in use for other com mon industries, that may be used for each purpose. He also indicates uses for by-products. Claims are made that the process is commercially feasible but no manufacturing costs are mentioned.

A copy of the article concerned will be made available to any interested appli

cants,-