COPRA AND COCONUT OIL 1 



By Harvey C. Brill, Harrison 0. Parker, and Harry S. Yates 



(From the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, Bureau of 

 Science, Manila) 



Increasing demands for fatty foodstuffs have developed the 

 vegetable-butter industry in the United States — an industry for- 

 merly restricted to England, Holland, and France. Refineries 

 and hydrogenation plants have been able to purify and harden 

 practically all of the animal and vegetable oils suitable for edible 

 purposes into either simple or compounded vegetable lards and 

 butters. The oil obtained from the coconut ranks high in im- 

 portance among these. However, an enormous amount of co- 

 conut oil is at present being used in the soap and glycerin in- 

 dustries, rather than for the manufacture of edible products, 

 because of the poor quality of the commercial oil and its conse- 

 quent cheapness. 



The production of copra constitutes one of the leading indus- 

 tries of many tropical countries. In the Philippine Islands prac- 

 tically the entire annual crop of about 431,387,000 nuts, 2 with the 

 exception of those used for local consumption, is turned into 

 copra. Copra exports from the Philippine Islands for 1916 were 

 72,277,164 kilograms, and oil exports were 16,091,169 kilograms. 3 



The annual exports represent approximately one third of the 

 world's output of copra, 4 most of which finds its way to the mar- 



1 Received for publication February, 1917. The isolation and study of 

 the molds growing on Philippine copra were made by Harry S. Yates, of 

 the section of botany, Bureau of Science. 



' Cox, Alvin J., Bureau of Science Press Bull. (1916), No. 54. Computed 

 from the yield of copra and based on the experiments of the Bureau of 

 Science, which show that for the Philippine Islands 1,000 nuts yield about 

 270 kilograms of copra. 



* Information furnished by the Insular Collector of Customs April 17, 

 1917. 



* Smith, H. H., Coconuts. The Consols of the East. 2d ed. Tropical 

 Life, London (1913), 362. Lewkowitsch, Chemical Technology and Ana- 

 lysis of Oils, Fats and Waxes. Macmillan & Co. Limited, London (1914), 

 22, 635. 



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