[Bioconversion] Conserve -- Sago, best usage for conversion

[rkurt at tadaust.org.au]

Geoff Thomas wrote:
> However to hark back to the beginning of this thread and the discussion on catails
> etc, I wonder
> has anyone heard of work done with the Sago palm metroxylon, a tree that grows in
> warm wet areas
> and produces 6.7–11.1 t/ac of pure starch, then almost twice as much again woody
> fibrous
> material?
> - Would it be best to make alcohol out of the starch and digest the rest? or simply
> digest the lot?
> Cheers,
> Geoff Thomas.
>   
Sago provides the staple diet for people of New Guinea who live in the 
swampy lowlands. The starch is held in the pithy trunk. Traditionally 
the pith is beaten into a pukp with adze like tools and then the starch 
is washed out of it and settled in some sort of a container. The starch 
sinks to the bottom and the water runs off the top. Eventually large 
lumps of the accumulated starch are wrapped ion leaves and tied up and 
then taken home for cooking or off to markets to trade for starchy 
tubers from people living more inland where they have less sago palms.
The starch is used in industry, where the large grains are useful in 
rubber production as a separator.

It would doubtlessly ferment well, but it takes a fair number of years 
for a tree to reach maturity. People also use the leaves for thatch and 
the frond stems for house walls.

Digesting the pith remains might work, I've no idea on that.

There was a move, some 30 years ago to grow it commercially on the lower 
Sepik Rive, I've no idea what became of it. I doubt the people would 
have approved it, being their staple and all.

Kurt
who spent 18 odd years in PNG, most of it in the Sepik District.