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

[Geoff Thomas]

Hi Kurt, yes I know how it is grown traditionally, but it is also grown commercially in many
places now, - I buy New Guinea Sago from the local markets and enjoy cooking with it, and it
seems a plant with tremendous potential, - although it takes 8 years to be ready, (5 years from
seedlings) it can be grown in clumps in such a way that each clump produces a mature plant each
year, containing up to 800 pounds of pure starch.
Other list members have suggested Leucaena as a high return crop, but it seems to be more prized
for a high nitrogen content and also likes cooler dryer sites.
The Sago also can handle being submerged for long periods, can have its feet in the water, and is
quite salt tolerant, so has a possibly different niche to the Leucaena.
I am particularly thinking of treated sewage outfall wetlands as a potential high growth
situation but that side I am not so concerned about, more as to how one would best bio-convert
this tree.
Thanks,
Geoff.


> 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.
>
>
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